The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2: A European Biography, 1750–1800 0253065135, 9780253065131

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THE JEWISH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Volume 2

Olamot Series in Humanities and social sciences Irit Dekel, Jason Mokhtarian, and Noam Zadoff

THE JEWISH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Volume 2 A European Biography, 1750–1800

k SHMUEL FEINER TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY M. GREEN Olamot Series in the Humanities and Social Sciences Published in association with Indiana University Press

Indi a na Univer sit y Pr ess

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA iupress.org © 2023 by the Olamot Center, Indiana University All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2023 Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-253-06513-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-253-06514-8 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-253-06515-5 (ebook)

This spirit of rebellion is becoming familiar everywhere; this is the consequence of our enlightened century. —Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette, 1775 Even before the end of this century, it will be possible to attain that which for many centuries we have been unable to attain, that is, to bring human reason—with respect to what always occupied its thirst for knowledge, but until today in vain—to complete satisfaction. —Emanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, 1781 The rationalism and the spirit of investigation of our century have still not erased at all the traces of the barbarism of history. —Moses Mendelssohn, Introduction to Menasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden, 1782

CONTENTS

Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii

Part I . 1750–1763

1. Three Astounding Proclamations: Class Division, Pressure from the State, and a Rift in the Rabbinical Elite 3 2. The Specter: Earthquake, the Horror of War, and Patriotism 39 3. The Pursuit of Honor and the Masked Ball: Azulai and Geldern Wander About in Europe and the East 72 4. Get Out, Jews!: Tests for Tolerance between London, Zhitomir, Yampol, and Rome 88 5. Blood for Blood: The Frankist Scandal and the Subversiveness of Religious Awakening 105 6. Intimate Life: Bodily Ailments, Quarrels, Crime, and Emigration 129 7. “We Are All Citizens of the World”: The Jewish Question in the Age of the Philosophes 143

Part II . 1764–1780

8. “The Great Change”: The Crisis in Poland, Awareness of Progress, and Humanistic Sentiment 175 9. “They Made My Flesh and Blood Fair Prey”: Tolerance and Fissures in the Walls of Society 206 10. 1772: A Year That Challenged the Old Order 230 11. “Let Every Man Do as He Pleases”: The Winds of Revolt 260 12. Curing the “Malady of My Nation”: Days of Individualism and Reform 291

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Part III . 1781–1800 13. “Great Thoughts Bubble Up and Awaken”: The Tangle of the Years 1781–1782 343 14. The Eve of Revolution: “The Happiest Period” or “The Great Confusion”? 389 15. From the Boxing Ring to the Halls of Parliament: Confrontations and Initiatives for Regeneration and Citizenship 432 16. “A Generation of Upheavals”: Euphoria, Terror, and the Rebellion of the Young in the 1790s 474 17. The Future of the Jews: A New Politics, a Religion in Dispute, and Freedom of the Individual 503 18. The Three Last Years: “We Have Reason to Congratulate Ourselves, That We Were Born in This Enlightened Period” 546 Conclusion: “No More Fear, No Shame. . . . I Live in Peace with Everything around Me”: From Brendel to Dorothea 583 Index 593

PREFACE

The end of the eighteenth century was celebrated in Europe as a great and dramatic event, which the people of that generation were fortunate to experience. Church bells rang, Te Deum services were held, the streets were lit up, and the masses danced to the strains of music while drinking jugs of wine and beer. Newspapers and magazines published passionate poems bidding farewell to the departing century and greeting the new one. Poets, authors, and intellectuals composed articles and books, looking backward and summing up the eighteenth century not only as a chronological epoch, but as an entire era, standing by itself and inviting the observer to wonder over the achievements and failures of humanity.1 Opinions and feelings were mixed. The voice of the Enlightenment, which changed the image of the world and introduced belief in progress, was still reverberating around the year 1800, but cannons were thundering in battles drenched in blood, causing vast suffering. Napoleon’s takeover of France strengthened the conservatives, who regarded the revolution as a wicked plot intended to destroy monarchies and religion, inspired by the ideas of the philosophes. The ethos of the century was encapsulated in the criticism of the faults of the past and the present, the great hope for reforms that would improve the life of the individual and the general public and pave the way to happiness, the dreams for peace and humanity, and intense awareness of the special character of the eighteenth century that propelled mankind forward. The cheers for the new century echoed in the head of German Danish intellectual and politician August Adolph von Hennings (1746–1826), a friend of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), when he published “The Genius of the Nineteenth Century.” On the morning of January 1, 1801, he greeted the readers,

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who had the privilege of encountering the many opportunities that were open then on the horizon of time, but he also presented the great challenge: Would the years pile up upon one another and, as in the past, be a mixture of human suffering and joy, or would the turning point come, of which the men of his generation, born in the eighteenth century, had dreamed? Hennings apparently absorbed Mendelssohn’s skepticism regarding the possibility of human progress, as he wondered whether “a seed of abundant blessings” lay within the nineteenth century or whether “a monstrous, frightening fetus” was already forming in its womb.2 Hopes and fears also throbbed in the hearts of the Jews of Europe at the end of the century. Most of them had not yet grasped the force of the political, economic, social, and cultural changes that had taken place since the start of the eighteenth century, although they did sense very well the significance of the individual autonomy that had made its mark on the period as a reality and as something to be wished for. They did not know, for example, that the Jewish population of the world had doubled, coming to 2,400,000, of whom about 2,000,000 lived in Europe. Relatively few of them were aware of the surge of the Hasidic movement in White Russia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, and Galicia or of the emancipation granted to the Jews of France. However, Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechow (1723–1805), a wine merchant from Galicia, believed that the security of the Jews had improved significantly. In his opinion, the merciful rulers of Europe “have already thought greatly about reconciliation, and, thank God, there has been no Satan or evil blow against our nation since the beginning of the rule of these kings [Joseph II], and may the Lord see to it that until the advent of the Redeemer no harm shall come to us.” He emphasized optimistically that in his day, 1800, blood libels had disappeared in Poland, “and far be it from any minister or judge to believe that about the Jews.” In his view, rationalism had increased, intellectuals refuted the beliefs of Christianity and denied miracles, the Enlightenment criticized religion, and belief in the supernatural was weakened (“See, for nearly thirty years or more we have not heard about the malice of demons against people”). Relatively few Jews turned to ba’alei shem (magicians, literally, masters of the name) for help, and only the Hasidim still believed in them. However, at the same time, what he saw as superficial and reprehensible secularization was increasing among young people, “who from youth were accustomed to the desires of this world and exempt themselves from some positive and negative commandments, and many of them assimilate with the gentiles.”3 A pessimistic departure from the eighteenth century was voiced in a literary dialogue between two women—the year 5560, on its way out, and the year 5561,

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just beginning. This work was published in Prague in response to the embarrassing Frankist episode that had broken out there, creating a feeling of crisis. First 5560 says to her successor that in her time the world had not changed: “There is no peace and no friendship, no union and no joining, no morality and no wisdom.” The hopeless wars continued as in the past, “and up to today, nothing has changed, sword and scythe pass over the land, blood is shed like water, and the sword has not been returned to its sheath.” In the end, however, she concedes that the Frankists’ predictions of the pangs of the messiah embarrass her and will give her a bad grade in the history books: “My sister! Please don’t laugh at me to yourself, and don’t let me be a mockery in your eyes and in those of all my sisters! For I am not to blame.” Only the foolishness of people who pursue vanities has stained her year. She complains: “How will my name be remembered in the history books for shame and great mockery, though I am pure!” Indeed, the religious-mystical awakening, with its libertine characteristics, contradicts the spirit of the eighteenth century. The year 5560 speaks in amazement: “For who could have imagined that such a thing would be born in our time, might such a thing be in this generation? . . . A generation that will be called a generation of intelligence and wisdom among the passing generations!”4 Messianic fervor in response to the dramatic events of the 1770s and 1780s gripped Elyakim Ben Abraham in London, a determined opponent of what he saw as the radical and atheistic Enlightenment from Spinoza to Voltaire and Thomas Paine. He regarded the independence of the American colonies and the French Revolution as proof of the dawn of a new age, marked by “the light of liberty.” Redemption was already at hand, he declared in a publication that appeared “in the year that Jerusalem proclaims” (a Hebrew expression with the numerical value of 5555 [1795]). The sorrows of exile were about to end: And thou shalt know today and return it to your heart to know it, that in the year 5543 [1783], in which there was the end of years . . . peace and liberty were declared for the inhabitants of America, and from there shone the light of liberty and spread to the state of France, and the land shed the light of its honor to remove abominations from the earth . . . and the light still increases, to this very day . . . and the redeemed shall go up to Zion, and the Lord will be king over the whole land, on that day the Lord will be One and His name will be One.5

Poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), who was born in Düsseldorf, was distant from this messianism, but he was proud to be a child of the philosophical century that formed him so strongly. He wrote in his memoirs: “I was born at the end of the skeptical eighteenth century, and in a city where during my childhood not only did the French rule, but so did the French spirit.”6

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From the liberal nationalistic viewpoint of Russian Jewish historian Simon Dubnow (1860–1941) at the end of the nineteenth century, the eighteenth century, until the French Revolution, appeared to be a dismal time for the Jews, when their marginality and exclusion from the high culture of Europe were most in evidence. Moreover, he viewed it as a period of reaction and crisis, of historical error, of failure to cope with new challenges. Dubnow wrote that not only were there barriers between Jews and non-Jews everywhere, and not only were Jews persecuted and humiliated, even more disturbing to him was their spiritual and religious self-seclusion and abasement. Particularly in the great century of reason, Judaism was like a weary, limping man, wandering helplessly, whose mind was benighted and whose thinking was clearly antirational. The estrangement and exclusion of the Jews from the great historical trends were epitomized, in his opinion, by the figures of the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, 1720–1797) and the Ba’al Shem Tov (Israel Ben Eliezer, 1698– 1760, known as the BESHT), who were contemporaries of Voltaire (1694–1778) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), but who represented opposite worlds. At the very moment when the period of universal human ideals commenced, Judaism barricaded itself against the outside world behind severe obstacles.7 More than a hundred years after Dubnow, contemporary American historian David Ruderman finds it hard to discern innovations in the Jewish eighteenth century and finds it less significant than the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in the intellectual domain. In his opinion, compared to the intellectual history of the Early Modern Period, “The eighteenth century in Jewish thought seems rather unspectacular in the novelty of its formulations and in the intensity of its contacts with the outside world.” If that century made any mark, it was in the political, social, and educational spheres, but not in culture. Extending the Early Modern Period in the excellent collection of articles in The Cambridge History of Judaism to more than three hundred years, until 1815, blurs the uniqueness of the eighteenth century even further.8 In the first volume of this study, devoted to 1700–1750, these pictures of the past was completely refuted. From the many windows that were opened onto it, the vibrant life of the Jews of Europe was visible, as well as in the New World and the Land of Israel, in vivid color. Event followed upon event, ambitious men and women did not hesitate to strive to better their lives, even when they collided with the norms of the tradition and the prohibitions of the rabbinical elite, while others sought fervent religious experiences. The forces of secularization, on the one hand, and religious renewal, on the other, caused enormous changes in the cultural and intellectual realm. In a dialectical process, the arousal of fierce reaction to the modern challenges led to the formation of new camps

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among the Jews, and sharpened sensibilities gave rise to oppositions and invented a rhetoric of hope and threat, preparing the ground for modern cultural struggles. In the general society, the increased intervention of the centralized state in the broad interstice between community organization and personal life undermined the old order. Among the innovative trends stood out the aspiration for happiness, the growth of individualism, and personal empowerment. Clear and penetrating voices of protest, characteristic of the age of criticism, were heard among the Jews as well. This volume of the biography of European Jewry in the eighteenth century covers the time from 1750 to 1800, a period even richer in modern upheavals, tensions, and challenges. It continues to follow closely the broad and profound processes that changed the familiar world from the ground up, to describe central episodes that were perceived even then as new and exciting, and to listen to the personal experiences that gave an explanation and meaning to the historical changes. The changes that began to emerge at the beginning of the century matured in the second half. Political consideration of the Jewish minority grew deeper. The controversy over the Jew Bill in Britain was a landmark in the discourse in public opinion. The three partitions of Poland dramatically changed the fate of the largest Jewish community in the world. Joseph II challenged the Jews when he issued a series of decrees of tolerance for the Habsburg Empire, and the debate over emancipation in the revolutionary French National Assembly caused a division between those who believed in equal citizenship and those who were suspicious of Jewish loyalty to the state. Hasidism established itself as a force to be reckoned with and an ambitious, organized movement emerged from early Haskalah. Trends toward acculturation and secularization aroused dread of a topsy-turvy world, and toward the end of the century, fear of an internal split increased. The lives of the Jews of Europe were intertwined with the political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of the continent. Their awareness of the dramatic processes in international relations was also much sharpened. For example, when Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi (1745–1812) was imprisoned in Saint Petersburg because his opponents had informed against him, he explained the Hasidic revolution by the new conditions that had emerged in Poland as it collapsed and in the conquering Russian Empire, which, in his opinion, promised the defeat of “rabbinical rule” and an opening to religious liberty and pluralism.9 Against the background of Europe, whose modern ethos was nourished by philosophers who wished to reform the world, by hot air balloons that inaugurated the era of aviation, by explorers who discovered lands, and by scientists and statesmen with programs for reform, there were also travelers and

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adventurers among the Jews such as H. aim Yosef David Azulai (1724–1806), Simon Geldern (1720–1788), Raphael Chaim Isaac Karigal (1732–1777), Shmuel Romanelli (1757–1814), and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772–1810). There were people such as the independent and determined intercessor, Elyakim Zelig of Yampol; bitter rivals such as Jacob Emden (1697–1776) and Jonathan Eybeschütz (1690–1764); those who laid the foundations of modern education and culture like Naphtali Herz Wessely (1725–1805) and Isaac Euchel (1756–1804); soldiers in the ranks of the revolutionaries in America, such as Francis Salvador (1747–1776), and for the independence of Poland, like Berek Joselewicz (1764– 1809); and world reformers like Zalkind Hourowitz (1751–1812) in France, Jacob Eliahu Frank in White Russia, and Simon Ben Wolf of Vilna. There was a cynical pursuer of truth like philosopher Solomon Maimon (1754–1800) of Lithuania. There were scholars like Isaac da Pinto (1717–1787), Emanuel da Costa (1717–1791), Israel Lyons (1739–1775), Marcus Bloch (1726–1793), and the inventor of sign language, Jacob Rodrigues Pereira (1715–1780). Daniel Mendoza (1764–1836) impressed fans in England with his victories in the boxing ring, and many people were drawn to the performances of “the master of mathematics and magic,” magician Jacob Philadelphia (1735–1795). Intellectual women like Henriette Herz (1764–1847) and Brendel-Dorothea Mendelssohn (1764–1839) participated in high German culture, and devotees and believers clung to the leaders of religious groups like Jacob Frank (1726–1791) and the maggid Dov Ber of Międzyrzecz (1710–1772). Not only poverty, distress, and helplessness prevailed on the margins of the society. Women peddlers rebelled against the norms of the community that sought to deprive them of their livelihood. Ruthless criminals like the members of the Chelsea Gang were extreme lawbreakers who embarrassed the Jews of England. Esther Abrahams (1771–1846), a servant who was accused of theft in London, was expelled to Australia and became one of the founders and leaders of the colony of New South Wales,. and the ormer peddler Aaron Isaak (1730–1816), an ambitious carver of seals born to an impoverished German family, became one of the founders of the Jewish settlement in Sweden and a leader of the Stockholm community. All these people and many others populated the Jewish eighteenth century, and their stories are told here. Listening to these voices not only provides evidence for reconstructing the past, it also offers a deeper understanding of the time and of the meaning people found in their lives. Slow and close reading of the course of the century points to years like 1772 or 1782, which had particular importance, enabling us to better understand the great processes that changed the face of history, such as revolutions, movements, ideas, and leaders. It also lets us penetrate intimate life and observe bitter communal and personal

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disputes. Thus, we can understand subtle and sharp historical changes and examine the mixed feelings that these changes and novelties aroused. The periodization of history according to centuries began in sixteenth-century Italy. In the eighteenth century, it was not only self-evident, but the people of the time gave the century the character of a period in a person’s life, giving it names such as the Age of Philosophy as they evaluated its significance and observed its trends. More than in preceding centuries, and especially toward its end, the people of Europe were aware they were living in the eighteenth century. For the first time, they marked the axis of time in the century with a beginning, a middle, a first half, a second half, and a conclusion as a natural unit that comprised the lives of four to five generations. Not surprisingly, this awareness gave rise to a tumultuous dispute as to the date of the century’s end. Ultimately it appears that most people accepted the opinion that the eighteenth century ended in 1800. This biography of the Jewish eighteenth century also includes that year, although it began in 1700; thus, in fact, it contains 101 years.10 This first century of the Modern Period was rich in changes and upheavals, and thus it may be seen as the forge of the modern Jewish world. Values and conceptions of the old world mingled with those of the new, and sometimes they struggled with each other without attaining any clear outcome even in the soul of a single person. It was a fascinating century, with many innovations, struggles, contradictions, disputes, perplexities, and doubts. Much began and almost nothing was concluded in it or reached maturity or final form—not the Hasidic movement, not the process of secularization, not emancipation, not the solution to the issue of rabbinical leadership, not the replacement of rabbinical hegemony with secular intellectuals, not women’s liberation, not the organization of orthodoxy against the threat of the new world, and not even the learning of the lessons of Sabbateanism. However, from the viewpoint of the contemporary Jewish world it seems that everything was already present in embryo in the eighteenth century, and one may discover in it quite a bit of the genetic code of the culture wars, conflicts, and schisms of the early twentyfirst century.

Note s 1. See Benigna von Krusenstjern, “‘O Jahrhundert! Komm, beginne . . . !’, Die Jahrundertwende von 1800/1801 in der zeitgenössischen Publizistik,” in Jahrhunderwenden, Endzeit und Zukunftsvorstellungen vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 235–252.

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2. August Hennings, “Morgengrüss an das neunzehnte Jahrhundert,” Der Genius des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts 1 (January 1801): 3–7. 3. See Gershon D. Hundert, “The Introduction to Divre Binah by Dov Ber of Bolechow: An Unexamined Source for the History of Jews in the Lwow Region in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,” AJS Review 33, no. 2 (2009): 225–269. 4. Sih.a bein shnat taf-quf-samekh uvein shnat taf-quf-samekh-alef, minh.a lashana h.adasha, lekhol hamishtoqeqim lada’at toldot hazman (Conversation between 5560 and 5561, an offering to the new year, for all who wish to know the history of the time, by a man who loves truth), Prague, 1800 (5560). 5. Elyakim Ben Avraham, Maamar bina la’itim (Article of Wisdom for the Times), London, 1795 (5555), 2. 6. Heinrich Heine, “Vorwort,” “Ich bin geboren zu Ende des skeptischen achtzehnten Jahrhunderts und in einer Stadt, wo zur Zeit meiner Kindheit nicht bloß die Franzosen, sondern auch der französische Geist herrschte,” Memoiren, 1854/1855, accessed April 23, 2022, https://www.heinrich-heine.net/werke.html. 7. Simon Dubnow, “Mahi hahistoria hayehudit?” (“What Is Jewish History, a Philosophical and Historical Essay”), trans. Ya’aqov Mittleman (Tel Aviv: Sinai, 1953), 92–93. 8. David Ruderman, “Looking Backwards and Forward: Rethinking Jewish Modernity in the Light of Early Modernity,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, 7: The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1089–1109. 9. See Yehoshua Mondshine, “Shnei maasarav shel rabeinu hazaqen leor te’udot h.adashot” (“The Two Incarcerations of our Elder Rabbi in the Light of New Documents”), Kerem H.abad 4, no. 1 (1992): 45–53. 10. See Johannes Burkhardt, Die Entstehung der modernen Jahrhundertrechnung (Dresden: Alfred Kümmerle, 1971).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The second volume of this biography of the Jewish eighteenth century concludes a ten-year personal journey, during which I immersed myself deeply into that century, which I found to be simultaneously so familiar and alien. This was the century in which the autonomous consciousness of modern human being was born, aspiring to correct the injustices and flaws of the past, a century of cultural and political revolutions, but also a century in which much blood was shed in the dynastic wars of Europe. Infant mortality was high, judicial penalties were severe, and the idea of putting an end to the exclusion of women and ethnic and religious minorities just began to appear on the public sphere agenda. So as not to allow myself to slip into an overly optimistic narrative in view of the first signs of religious tolerance, I took inspiration from the cogent words of the liberal, humanistic Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, which have not lost their relevance, as he observed his era skeptically and with apprehension about the future: “We dreamed of nothing but Enlightenment, and we believed that the light of reason would shine on the surroundings with such power that illusions and burning fanaticism could no longer be seen. But, as we see, on the other side of the horizon, night is falling again, with all its ghosts.” I am grateful to the marvelous community of historians in the field of Modern Jewish History in Israel, Europe, and the United States, as only from deep, prolonged, critical, and collegial conversation with them could this book have come to light. I especially wish would like to thank Immanuel Etkes, Shulamit Volkov, Yair Minzker, David Ruderman, and David Sorkin, who encouraged me and offered new insights into issues that arose in the book. Many thanks

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also to Natalie Naimark-Goldberg and Naama Jager-Fluss for their assistance in preparing the book for publication. It is also my great pleasure to thank the Olamot Center for Scholarly and Cultural Exchange with Israel of the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University for selecting my book, which was originally published in Hebrew, and for making my scholarship available to English readers. I am grateful to the editor of the series, Irit Dekel, former Olamot directors Jason Mokhtarian and Noam Zadoff, and the professional team of the Indiana University Press for their confidence in me and for seeing to the production of the book in the best manner. I have no words to thank my perceptive translator, Jeffrey M. Green, who mediated between Hebrew and English with precision and managed to preserve my style. And last but not least, I dedicate my book to my beloved wife Rivka and our wonderful children and grandchildren who give me the strength and the right perspective to navigate between the present and the past.

THE JEWISH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Volume 2

Part I

1750–1763

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THREE ASTOUNDING PROCL AMATIONS Class Division, Pressure from the State, and a Rift in the Rabbinical Elite

The poor women of Lithuania who wandered about in the winter of 1751 among villages, monasteries , and aristocratic homes, offering their wares for sale, had neither name, nor face, nor voice. The severe regulations issued against them on November 22 by the Jewish Council of Lithuania (the umbrella organization of the communities) regarded the Jewish peddler women as a disturbing group on the bottom of the social hierarchy. They were described with contempt as “those women who go to the houses of the gentiles with some merchandise”; women who competed with respectful “householders” for customers in an offensive manner, which was beneath consideration, and who brazenly violated the gender hierarchy.1 A year and half earlier, on April 17, 1750, in his palace in Berlin, King Friedrich II (1712–1786) signed the New and Revised General Privilege and Letter of Protection for Jewry in the Kingdom of Prussia, the law that regularized the rights and duties of the Jews until the emancipation in the nineteenth century. An appendix was added to it with a classified list of names that left no doubt as to the status granted by the state to each and every person. Only 260 Jews (partly families and partly individuals) enjoyed the right to live and earn a living in Berlin. First on the list was the military supplier and agent of the court Moshe Gumpertz (1717–1759), who held the monopoly for the manufacture of tobacco and who for years was one of the main lay leaders (parnasim) of the community. David Isaac was one of the last persons on the list. By virtue of his profession as a maker of eyeglasses, he was a “tolerated” Jew. Peddling was entirely forbidden, and supervision of the Jewish population was tight. Those who did not fulfill the severe conditions and nevertheless were present within the boundaries of Prussia could expect to be deported.2

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T h e Je w ish Eighte en t h Cen t u ry

The third proclamation was offensive, direct, and very personal. Although it was heard only in Jacob Emden’s small private synagogue at Breitstrasse 155 in Altona, which was ruled by Denmark, its reverberations reached far afield and caused one of the greatest scandals of the epoch. After the reading of the Torah on Thursday morning, 9 Shevat, 5511 (February 4, 1751), Emden rose to his feet, pounded the pulpit, announced that he had no doubt that Sabbatean phrases appeared in an amulet he was asked to examine, and said, “I have ruled that this scribe is a heretic, no matter who he is, so long as no one shows me I am wrong.” He did not mention the scribe’s name, but none of the worshippers in the congregation failed to understand that at that moment, a crisis had been reached in the investigation that had been underway for several months regarding amulets that offered magical protection for pregnant and birthing women. The amulets were being distributed by Jonathan Eybeschütz, the new and admired rabbi of the triple community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek. Emden, whose life story from his youth also figured in our account of the first half of the century, intentionally took a daring step, whose price was heavy. In the name of devotion to truth, he publicly voiced a far-reaching demand to condemn, discharge, and ban one of the most senior and strongest members of the rabbinical elite.3

“Th at No Wom a n M ay Go to th e House s of Genti l e s”: Gen der a n d Au thor it y These three proclamations, close to each other in time but distant in place and in the level of authority behind them, lay out several paths on the historical road map of the early 1750s. The first expressed the inner tension in the communities of Eastern Europe, the second expressed the deep penetration of the centralized state and bureaucracy in the lives of the Jews of Central Europe, and the third showed the strong emotions that swept the Jewish spirit and religion in the age of Enlightenment, when secularization, religious awakening, mysticism, and rigid conservatism were undermining its stability. This inner religious dispute was also examined closely in general public opinion and by the state authorities, raising questions about the authority of lay leaders and rabbis. In all three instances, the proclamations were issued by those to whom the society had given special leadership status, but they applied to individuals. The peddler women of Lithuania remained anonymous, but the regulation itself paid attention to the initiative of the individual Jew versus the community leadership. Each protected Jew in Prussia had purchased his rights and entered the lists prepared by the state authorities by virtue of his economic success. Although Emden presented his struggle as a campaign against subversive Sabbateans, as

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a holy war, and as a mission to save the religion from those who attacked it from within, from the first it was focused on a bitter personal rival and gave extreme expression to his autonomous, stormy, uncompromising personality. These proclamations—from Lithuania, Prussia, and northern Germany— conveyed voices of protest and reverberated with threats of economic competition, heresy, sacrilege, an increase in the number of Jews in the state, and the diminution of autonomy. However, the desire to avoid further dangers and for regulation and supervision characterized the great spirit of revision of the entire eighteenth century; there was a tendency to regularize, organize, repair what was flawed, lay bare the truth, improve, and find solutions to problems that were seen as especially acute. Behind what appear to be local events are in fact some of the great processes of the start of the second half of the century: the leaders’ struggle for authority, a rethinking of the status of the Jewish minority in the modern state, and the continued, conflicted debate about who was a good, loyal, and worthy Jew in an age when Judaism was already perceived and implemented in different ways and the critique of the old had become common. Dealing with peddler women was not a marginal or minor matter for the community leadership. Not surprisingly, the sextons in every community were instructed to read the regulation, which was intended to harm their livelihood, at particularly sacred and festive times, when the community gathered in the synagogue. Every month, when the following month was blessed on the Sabbath, they were to announce that it was forbidden to supply merchandise to the peddlers (tendlerin), and on Rosh Hashana, when men, women, and children tensely and silently awaited the sounding of the shofar, the peak of the service for the Day of Judgment for all mankind, they should announce “that no woman may go to the houses of the gentiles.” The difficulties of earning a living and practical life penetrated the Jewish public and intimate space along with the prayers—from the streets, the fairs, the markets, and the long and dangerous roads through the forests. In the regulation and its promulgation, purely economic interests received religious and existential meaning of the first order. Even divine forgiveness and redemption might depend on observance of the regulation, as was written at its conclusion and above the list of signers who ratified it: “And who knows whether the Lord will return and console us and speedily gather our scattered remnants.”4 Why was such a great effort invested? Why did the Lithuanian Council, the supercommunal organization whose very existence, beginning in the early seventeenth century, symbolized the large dimensions of self-rule, identify such a grave problem in the peddler women, one that demanded a huge effort to solve it permanently? After thirty years of holding only district and local

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assemblies, the leaders of the Lithuanian Council met during the fair in the city of Mir, in November 1751, to attend a series of meetings intended mainly to allocate the burden of taxation. Why did the representatives of the five leading communities—Vilna, Brisk, Pinsk, Grodno, and Slutsk—choose at that time to formulate a regulation condemning the peddler women? A peddler woman was not exceptional in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the mid-eighteenth century. Married women who contributed to supporting the family, unmarried and divorced women, and independent widows were present at various sites in the economic system—in leaseholds on the estates of the nobility, in producing and selling alcoholic beverages, as owners of stalls in the market, as saleswomen in stores, as servants, as the managers of taverns, and as peddlers.5 The earnings of peddler women undoubtedly placed them at the bottom of the economic ladder. Thus, the warning about the worrisome spread of this phenomenon testified to deepening poverty. In a time of demographic growth of the Jewish population, impoverishment, crowded housing in the cities and villages, and the expansion of the circles of poverty were conspicuous trends, as shown in the work of historian Gershon Hundert on the Jews of Poland. The women peddlers’ journeys on foot were long and wearisome, distancing them from their families. Their income was tiny. The merchandise was provided on credit by merchants or store owners. The women carried baskets or sacks of buttons, loops, ribbons, delicate fabrics, lace, needles, pins, and similar wares, which were purchased at the fairs in Germany and Silesia, among other places. A generation later, in his journal of travel in Poland, German scientist Johann Philip Carosi wrote with disgust about the large groups of desperate peddlers struggling to attract customers: “Some of [the Jews] travel from one noble estate to another, bearing such merchandise as fabric and other odds and ends. . . . When the traveler arrives in Opatόw, he cannot get rid of them. Twenty or thirty or more men and women fall upon him and force their merchandise on him.”6 The livelihood of the poor peddler women disturbed the council, and their regulation was firm and sweeping: “From this day on, no woman shall go with any merchandise to the houses of gentiles or to any priest or official, and not two or three together, for any purpose or manner in the world.” The vehement tone of the accusation against the peddler women betrayed anger and fear. Control your women, the leaders of the communities of Lithuania upbraided the men, because “many men break out the regulations in all the communities, who have truly abandoned their wives and earned a living from them to provide for their household.” They threatened with the force of their authority and religious norms, alleging “their children are close to being bastards.” The

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claim that allowing the peddler women to work implied exposing them to sexual temptation or rape touched on deep fears of exposing women to intimate encounters with men in general. This was not an imaginary suspicion; just a few years later, for example, a humiliated, divorced servant named Rivka Gierszeniowna would reveal in a Polish investigation that when she had been sent by her employer to the home of Moshe Miernik to buy buckwheat to bake bread, he forced himself on her and made her pregnant. The passive submission evident in her words merely strengthened her low self-image and her awareness of her vulnerable social status.7 In addition to being concerned for the women’s bodies, the authors of the regulation against the peddler women were worried about the temptation of religious laxity. They would not be meticulous in observing Halakha and would violate the Sabbath and festivals “until they touch upon the entire Jewish religion.” However, it appears that beyond these arguments, what truly pained and perturbed the legislators were particularly mundane economic interests. On the previous day, they had assembled to divide the burden of taxation among the communities. They then addressed the matter of the women peddlers, with the view of protecting businesses that were affected, “for they take away the livelihood of quite a few householders and merchants of all the other communities with their frivolity.” The gendered image of women (“women’s minds are frivolous,” according to the Talmud, Shabbat 33b), implying that they are irresponsible and incapable of serious consideration, supported the effort to eliminate the peddlers’ competition against the merchants. “These women,” on the bottom of the ladder of trade, were seen as damaging to the livelihood of merchants and the suppliers of merchandise of higher status. Many communities in Central and Eastern Europe took care that peddlers might not compete with better established merchants with lower prices and home delivery. The legislators, who were concerned for “the powerful social strata,” explained sharp-eyed historian Jacob Katz, exploited the religious and ethical rationalization to struggle against the peddler women, who harmed “their economic interests.”8 Not surprisingly, those who signed the regulation were lay leaders of the communities and not the rabbis, who also took part in that meeting in Mir. The problem of the peddler women was seen less as a religious transgression than as a threat to the livelihood of householders and as a violation of discipline; as Hundert notes, “What we may be seeing here is that women were evading the authority of the kahal and seeking economic independence.”9 The frustration was particularly great because the leadership was helpless in opposition to the poor peddler women, whose number constantly grew. They complained that “the hand of the community does not manage to punish them,

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since they are almost the majority, and the majority of the majority,” and they are safe because their customers, the aristocrats who live on great estates in palaces, defend them: “They have a hand and a name [i.e., status] with those in power and in castles and courts.” The list of the severe sanctions merely points to the desperation of the legislators, who found it so difficult to stop what did not seem to them like the precarious livelihood of poor people but the financial damage that also spoiled power relations in the society. The regulation prohibited supplying the peddler women with merchandise and threatened the women themselves with the most severe deterrent measures available to the community organization—“to drive them away and expel them and excommunicate them and remove them from the entire Jewish community and deny them marriages, and naturally not to circumcise their boys or officiate in their marriages, and not to stand within four ells of them until they take it upon themselves to cease this trade.” Not even the punishment of excommunication, which removes the protection of the community, isolates the excommunicated, and denies them the possibility of normal family life, seemed a sufficient deterrent. In light of the desperate circumstances that sent many women out to work as peddlers, the steps the regulation demanded were surprisingly harsh. Every individual householder in his community received exceptional executive authority from “the Council of Lithuania”: “A householder has permission, if he sees a tendlerke, to seize her merchandise for himself without asking a rabbi, a leader, or dayan [rabbinical judge], and obviously to damage it and tear it and spoil her merchandise as much as possible, to take the law into his own hands.”10 What was in the minds of the legislators who drafted this regulation, when they authorized individuals to attack a peddler woman, even with physical violence, against the will of the community leaders? Perhaps the heads of the umbrella organization realized that they would not be heeded in isolated communities and that only the merchants who were injured would be angry and determined enough to confiscate and destroy the pitiful merchandise of a woman who ignored the prohibition. In fact, the erosion of the supercommunal leadership and the feeling of helplessness loaded the regulation with exceptional warnings and sanctions. If the lay leaders and rabbis would not help the individual householder, he was entitled, according to the regulation about women peddlers, to exert counterpressure by refusing to pay taxes “until they do justice against that tendlerin.” Viewed more broadly, the regulation against the peddler women testifies to a collapse of discipline and a blow to self-rule in the extensive autonomy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the following decade, the Polish authorities would seek to dismantle the community umbrella organizations.

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However, a few years before the end of the Lithuanian Council, a similar but much milder regulation appeared in its register. The leaders of the council had apparently become reconciled to the phenomenon of the peddler women, and they permitted it, on condition that the women be accompanied by a man to guard them. They also abandoned the angry and threatening tone, imposing only a minimal punishment: “If some woman does not heed and violates this, the community authority must punish her and fine her husband.”11

“Th e Je ws A r e th e Most Da ngerous”: A bsolu tism, Su perv ision, a n d Segr egation The General Privilege and Letter of Protection for the Jews of Prussia also represented a process of erosion of Jewish autonomy, although not as a conclusion regarding the weakened authority of the leadership and the dismantling of institutions, but rather as a result of the intentional intervention of the state and its machinery and the subordination of the community to its supervision. The lay leaders of Berlin, for example, the heads of the wealthy elite families, and the merchants, Gumpertz, Ephraim, or Itzig, became, in a sense, senior functionaries responsible to the Prussian government for the organization of Jewish life. As in Lithuania, the ones who suffered most from the policy of supervision were the Jews who were not householders—indigent wanderers, peddlers, and young men without the right to marry or reside in the country—as the state openly declared that they were neither useful nor desirable. The reasons advanced for the General Privilege in April 1750 betrayed Friedrich II’s double face. While he ceremoniously proclaimed, in the spirit of enlightened absolutism, that the general welfare of all the inhabitants and principles of justice and decency underlay his policy toward the Jews, he pointed out the huge economic damage to the Christian subjects of Prussia caused by Jewish commercial dealings. The increase in the severity of the restrictions that the new privilege imposed on the Jews was presented, with great cynicism, as a defensive measure from which both Christians and Jews would benefit. As with the regulation of the peddler women, the primary threat with which the legislator dealt was economic competition. The expansion of business, the entry into new fields, the infiltration of foreign Jews, and the increase in peddlers worried the senior officials, because they evaded supervision. Not surprisingly, paragraph nineteen forbade peddling from house to house and permitted this business only on special days, when open markets were held at fairs. In convoluted terms that barely concealed the discrimination, the proclamation declared that its goal was to prevent upsetting the equilibrium to the detriment of Christians with respect to the opportunities open to everyone.12

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This policy was consistent with Friedrich II’s worldview, as he formulated it in his Political Testament of 1752. He was proud that “Catholics, Lutherans, Reform Protestants, Jews, and a number of other Christian sects dwell in this country and live here in peace,” and he rejected policies of persecution and discrimination. Exactly at that time, the king hosted Voltaire in his palaces in Potsdam and Berlin (until a dispute broke out and separated them), and in the spirit of the witty French philosopher’s critique of religion, he noted that “if you think about it, all the religions are founded on a mythology, which is more or less absurd.” However, he immediately mentioned the exception to the rule: “Of all these sects, the Jews are the most dangerous, because they damage the commerce of the Christians and are not needed for the state.” The king called them cheats and suspected them of concealing interests foreign to the state. He conceded that at most Prussia needed them to manage trade with Poland, but he believed his policy should be to reduce the permanent presence of the Jews in the country and restrict their economic activities.13 Friedrich II inherited from his father the policy permitting only 120 Jewish families to dwell in Berlin, but alarming reports reached his desk saying that 4,716 Jews lived in all of Prussia and that their number had already passed 2,000 in Berlin. Hence, for example, when Silesia was conquered in the War of the Austrian Succession, the new rulers in Breslau quickly decreed that only twelve families could continue to live in the city and the others must depart. The General Privilege went through a long process before the king signed it in 1750. No less than thirteen years had passed since the government officials had begun to gather demographic and financial data and to discuss early versions of the law intended to regularize the status of the Jews in the state once and for all.14 In the spirit of Prussian bureaucracy, the final version of the General Privilege was a long document in which the centralized state laid down its interests in thirty-three clauses, as well as its economic ideas about how to include the Jewish minority in the efficient and organized framework down to the last detail. Friedrich II, along with Samuel Freiherr von Cocceji (1679–1755), the head of the cabinet in charge of reforms in Prussia, and senior officials of the Generaldirektorium, stood behind the law, which declared of itself that it was formulated after deep and comprehensive examination, and it was taken to be an achievement and a masterpiece of innovative policy.15 Out of the four central areas of the General Privilege—demographic supervision, marking out forbidden and permitted livelihoods, imposition of tax, and supervision of the community leadership—the division of the Jews according to a class hierarchy stood out in particular. This was determined according to the economic levels of the individuals, and their rights and duties were derived

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from it. The apex of the pyramid was inhabited by a small elite group of merchants (about fifteen in all of Prussia) who enjoyed extensive rights to do business, to travel, to dwell, and, most important of all, to bequeath their status to their sons. After them came another elite group of “ordinary protected Jews,” whose rights could be bequeathed to only one son for a substantial fee. The third class was that of “non-ordinary protected Jews” with professions that were in demand, as well as widows from the first and second classes or those who married them. The fourth class included community functionaries. Two other groups were defined as merely “tolerated,” and these included the children of “protected Jews” and of workers and servants of the community. Aside from the first two groups, the status of all the others was precarious and temporary. Male and female servants were forbidden to marry, and anyone who did so lost the status of “tolerated” and was required to leave. The regulation of the peddler women in Lithuania revealed the deep gaps in class within Jewish society, but in Prussia, the policy of granting differential rights to individuals was what shaped the class structure and gave it juridical authority. The collaboration between the Jewish leadership and the government officials did not end with preparatory discussions. It was also expressed in the actual implementation of the privileges. The lay leaders were taken to be one of the arms of the Prussian governmental apparatus and even as a body of the police, investigating, reporting, arresting, and deporting. They bore personal responsibility for observing the regulations and the payment of taxes, debts, and fines. Every three months, they were required to submit a list of the Jewish residents, so the government would have exact data. They were also responsible for supervising the entry of foreign Jews into Berlin. Paragraphs twenty-one to twenty-four reinforced the procedure that had already been applied in the second decade of the century, which was that guards hired by the community would see to it that beggars and peddlers would not infiltrate and that visitors would not settle in the city. Foreigners who arrived on horseback or on foot and not in the post carriages were to enter by the Prenzlau or Halle gates. There, Jewish guards were hired to register them, to inspect their travel documents, and to determine their identity and the purpose of their arrival. Beggars (Betteljuden) were forbidden to cross the border into Prussia. If they got to Berlin, they would be arrested at the Prenzlau gate, housed in the Jewish Poor House, given food and charity, and be sent on their way within a day. For beggars and peddlers, Prussia was nearly out of bounds. Hundreds of poor Jews were pursued and expelled, and many others lived there only by virtue of their service to the upper classes as rabbis, teachers, or servants. However, the protected Jews, who were integrated in the mercantilist economy as

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merchants, bankers, minters, and entrepreneurs in the textile industry, were highly desirable in the view of the new officials of the bureaucracy. As Miriam Bodian has shown, behind the strictness of the “supervisory state,” which considered only economic usefulness, lay a new kind of ethos, a radical vision for changing the social order by ignoring ethnic and religious categories and moving toward efficiency, productivity, diligence, initiative, “and perhaps even the aspiration for a society in which a person’s place would be determined by his attachment to this vision and his ability to contribute to its fulfillment.”16 Looking beyond Prussia toward the regions ruled by Maria Theresa (1717– 1780) in the Austrian Empire reveals that there, too, a similar policy developed in parallel. As early as 1728, the communities were forbidden to pass new regulations in Moravia, and the meeting of the Jewish Great Council in the autumn of 1748 was in fact the last one in the history of this supercommunal organization, which had existed for about a century. Yissakhar Dov Eskeles, the rabbi of the bundle of communities of Moravia, lived in Vienna and was asked to present the regulations of Medinat Mehrin (the Moravian Council) for review in German translation. A general law, promulgated four years later (General Regulations on Matters of Administration, Justice, and Commerce for the Jews of Moravia), presented the conclusions of a comprehensive investigation by the authorities and in effect subjected the twenty thousand Jews of Moravia to administrative bodies and the police. Now every regulation and appointment required authorization, and several sections of the old regulations, which, for example, were concerned with education and established the functions of the rabbi, became state laws. Thus, paradoxically, the state preserved the autonomy of the community and adopted internal instructions, such as the obligation to hire a rabbi and to maintain a yeshiva (Talmudic study hall) with twelve students in every settlement with more than thirty Jewish families or the authority of the rabbi of the state to determine even which tractate of Talmud should be studied in the yeshivas. Now, however, the source of authority for these regulations passed from the heads of the community to state officials.17 A Hebrew chronicle of the events of 1750 in Prague complained not only about the crisis and the great difficulties in rehabilitating the community after the revocation of the law of expulsion but also about the internal tensions and struggles with Austrian officialdom. For example, in the beginning of the year, instructions were issued stating “that those without permission to dwell, who are employed here in service by householders, and if they have a wife or children with them in Prague, will be expelled, lest they also settle among the people of Prague and claim the right of long term residence, and engage in commerce.” The policy of segregating the Jews there was among the most

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severe in Central Europe. The Jews of Prague were marked with ribbons on their sleeves and in their hair, so they could be identified in the public realm. Before the expulsion, this had been merely a collar, but, the local authorities complained, “now they walk among the nations, and they cannot be recognized to be separated. . . . Therefore every Jew who does not have a beard must have a sign on his left arm, a piece of green garment on his forearm . . . and unmarried women who go out dressed as if they aren’t Jewish will make a sign on their foreheads, a piece of a garment of the same color to show that she is Jewish.” After a special request not to embarrass the women, the sign on their forehead was replaced by a green ribbon.18 In the winter, a delegation of community leaders set out for Vienna and petitioned to reduce the taxes and to consider the enormous losses occasioned during the years of expulsion from Prague in the previous decade. The emissaries delivered “an epistle of mercy to our Lady the Queen to exempt the members of the community from the heavy taxes on us after all the events that overcame us,” and representatives of the communities of Bohemia and Moravia sent similar petitions after that. In the spring, the queen’s affirmative answer was received with joy and proclaimed in the synagogues. However, it then transpired that, although they all had suffered from the expulsion, they did not maintain solidarity, and class tensions did not disappear. The same preferential treatment of well-established householders over those poorer and weaker than they, which was so rudely manifest in the regulations of the peddler women in Lithuania, also existed in Prague. A delegation of “middle-level householders” appeared before the assembly of lay leaders bearing a power of attorney from eighty men and protesting the arbitrary and damaging allotment of taxation. Why did the wealthy display such hardness of heart? “Who has heard and who has seen such evil regulations,” which did not make allowances for those who had lost their fortune? And how was it that even after the reduction from Maria Theresa, “they ordained even to make a poor beggar from door to door equal to a rich man,” since they would have to pay the same tax? However, the proposal for more just distribution was met with indifference, and the chronicle concludes with harsh criticism and accusations of corruption, self-interest, and egotism. The individuals who sought “to correct and thwart the distortion and flaw” did receive a promise that a serious discussion of the matter would be held, but in fact nothing changed. The bitterness and disappointment were visible: “The leaders of the community did not do what they said . . . and every one of them went . . . to rush to plunder, to take for themselves and for their relatives and not for others.” The protest against the ruling oligarchy, which ignored the distress caused by the expulsion, was futile.19

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“Th e Tor a h Wa s Split in T wo”: Chi ldbirth a n d Fe a r of De ath; Wom en a n d th e Dispu te ov er A m u l ets The proclamation in Altona created an extreme rift in the fabric of religious leadership, caused a huge tempest in the public sphere of European Jewry, and attracted the curious and astonished curiosity of public opinion. The subversive and unsettling political and religious conclusion of the public denunciation of a famous rabbi for being infected with Sabbatean heresy did not escape the view of the heads of the Lithuanian Council. On Tuesday, November 23, 1751, the day after the regulation regarding the peddler women, they met with the rabbis of the communities to publish a vehement condemnation of those who dared to defame Rabbi Eybeschütz: “We heard a rumor, and our bowels were stirred . . . the Torah was split in two, and Israel was divided into two groups. . . . Woe to the ears that hear such a thing, may heaven forbid it. . . . Woe to the people from the insult to the Torah.” The danger of a schism aroused dread. To strike at a famous rabbi was regarded as malicious and revolting, and the decision that emerged from Mir sought to silence the criticism immediately: “We ban and ostracize and curse and revile the one whose heart was so high as to open his mouth in our council, the council of Lithuania, against our teacher and rabbi, the genius, our master, the aforementioned rabbi Jonatan, may his light shine.”20 The natural way to air suspicion against Rabbi Eybeschütz was apparently through inner, closed rabbinical discourse on the subject of the purity of religion versus the Sabbatean challenge—discourse that had not died down even more than eighty years after disappointment with the messiah who had converted to Islam. However, the strength of the emotions that had been aroused, violent incidents, the involvement of Christian scholars, and the dispute between Emden and Eybeschütz, not only in houses of study and in assemblies of the community leadership but also in the court of the king of Denmark, in meetings of the Senate in Hamburg, and in German and Polish books, pamphlets, and newspapers, gave the controversy modern significance.21 After episodes such as the immigration to the Land of Israel by Judah Hasid’s holy society, the trial of Jew Süss, and the expulsion of the Jews of Prague in the first half of the century, once again people related to the ferment in the small Jewish minority in Europe as fascinating news. From an internal point of view, the personal rivalry between rabbis Emden and Eybeschütz gave powerful expression to the outburst of Jewish individualism with the loudest reverberations thus far. Each man struggled uncompromisingly for his own truth and social status. “I decide!” Emden declared with blunt confidence as he pointed an accusing

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finger at his rival. The commotion and leveling of accusations led to an expression of the spirit of discontent, dissatisfaction, and criticism that arose among the Jews of eighteenth-century Europe. Severe accusations were leveled by both sides, texts dripping with venom and vehement hatred competed with one another, and two parties arose spontaneously, each maintaining its own narrative about what was really happening in the 1750s among the Jews of Europe. It was a modern struggle for public opinion waged by propaganda. No less than the great question regarding the religious deviance of a central rabbi and his clandestine Sabbatean identity, two different stories powerfully confronted one another in this episode. Emden portrayed Eybeschütz as a cunning religious leader who tricked people and who, as in the stories of the radical Enlightenment, conspired to deal a mortal blow to religion and promote heresy. For his part, Eybeschütz was convinced he had fallen victim to the persecution of envious enemies who balked at nothing, while both of them declared that only fear of heaven and apprehension for the honor of the Torah were what motivated them. Like the power struggles that were waged at the expense of the peddler women in Lithuania, in this episode, as well, women were drawn into the thick of the storm and played a passive role in it unintentionally. These women, too, were absolutely distant from the centers of culture and society and excluded from public discussion. The urgent and desperate need for protection against the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth and the fear for the health of their babies at a time when infant mortality was very common brought many women to put their faith in the magical power of amulets. They believed that the mysterious formulas and drawings of the Magen David, written on parchment and held next to their bodies in sealed leather pouches, would give them the protection of hidden, high powers in their difficult moments. Rabbi Eybeschütz was known not only as a high-level scholar but also as a successful producer of amulets. In advance of his arrival in Altona, the women’s expectations soared. Emden testified that in the mid-eighteenth century, childbirth was almost a death sentence for young women: “The women give birth and die as girls . . . and the outcry of the city rises to heaven. Every woman who goes into labor thinks she is bowing down to murder.” It even happened that on a single day, three women died in childbirth one after the other, “and there was a great outcry to God in the city, and some women went mad and said bitter things that are forbidden to tell”—apparently blasphemous words of helpless women who protested to heaven. In this time of crisis, Eybeschütz was greeted as a savior whose intervention “would bring relief to the plague of women giving birth.”22 He was appointed as the rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek with a long trail of heavy suspicion that the amulets he wrote for a considerable fee were

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addressed to the false messiah, Shabbetai Zevi. Some of the amulets borne by women in the communities of Alsace-Lorraine were opened, and knowledge of their contents reached Altona and aroused concern. The intimate distress of the women was revealed to all eyes when the magical spells they had received were copied and circulated: “Hava the daughter of Moshe Nolbach and Reichl, that she shall not abort her fetus”; “Keila the daughter of Merele, the wife of the prominent Leizer Reiksy, that she will undergo the birth safely”; “Idel the daughter of Jacob Segel and wife of Aaron the son of David for pregnancy to hang on her neck.” Those who accused Eybeschütz of heresy and Sabbateanism deciphered the code in Hava Nolbach’s amulet: “In the name of the God of Israel Who dwells in the glory of His power . . . and by virtue of the true messiah the holy Shabbetai Zevi, I decree upon all the demons and malicious spirits that they shall not do any harm in the world to the bearer of this amulet, Hava the daughter of Reichel, that she will not miscarry and will give birth and she will be perfectly healthy.” Reading the amulet of Keila, the daughter of Merele, by switching letters produces: “May the Lord God of Israel, YDVD, be magnified and sanctified and His chosen servant Shabbetai Zevi forever.”23 One of the two amulets that Eybeschütz had issued in his new place of residence was given to “Madam Sheinekhi the daughter of the lay leader Gottschalk Levi,” and when it was deciphered, it, too, contained the name of Shabbetai Zevi.24 Eybeschütz denied the charge and claimed forcibly that the interpretation of the amulets was biased, false, and hostile. In his self-defense, in Luh.ot ‘edut (tablets of testimony), he fought to prove the effectiveness of his magical powers and his success in decreasing the numbers of women dying in childbirth in the three communities that he headed. He attacked Emden furiously for holding him responsible for the women’s disaster and for doubting his powers: “He dared to publish that because of my amulets a weakness of the women began, and after they removed the amulets, the plague was stopped, whereas everyone who entered the gates of my city [any of my acquaintances] knows the opposite, that before I came here the fury of Lord [prevailed], may the Merciful One preserve us, thank God, when I came, the Lord had pity and withdrew from His rage.” The reliability of his version depended on evidence. At his request, the gravediggers of the Burial Society issued a document testifying to these facts, based on the register or the dead in Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek: “Between Tammuz 5509 [1749] and the end of Elul 5510 [1750] sixteen women died in childbirth, for our many sins, and from Tishrei 5511 [1750], with the arrival of the Rabbi, his Honor, the Great Rabbi and Master, may his light shine, the head of the rabbinical court and the rabbi of the holy community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, here, until Tishrei 5512 [1751] three women died in childbirth.”25

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Eybeschütz arrived in the autumn of 1750 and gave protective amulets, thereby reducing, according to this argument, the rate of death in childbirth from sixteen women in the previous year to only three in his first year in office. Thus, with magical means, he successfully halted what was threatening to become a serious epidemic. In the dispute on supernatural abilities to deal with illness and death, Emden stuck to his opinion that Eybeschütz’s amulets merely did harm. The test of success in bringing relief to the distress of the women in Jewish society was, in this case, a test of Eybeschütz’s legitimacy as a religious figure to whom was attributed, as with his contemporary, Israel Ben Eli’ezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov, expertise in magic spells for health. Emden also thought that Eybeschütz’s image as a venerated rabbi was hollow at the core and artificially inflated by means of effective propaganda on the part of an energetic lobby, in which his family and disciples took part. In his opinion, mainly women absorbed and spread the rumors about his greatness as a scholar and his powers, and “they said that he decrees in heaven and his will is done in whatever he desires” and that he had the ability to make barren women fertile and relieve labor pains. Even his selection as the rabbi of the three communities would have been impossible, had the women not been mobilized “so they would do all that was in their power to seduce their husbands to give him the honor of the rabbinate of the three communities.” The venerated rabbi was the darling of the women, who, according to Emden’s interpretation, had, with the characteristic frivolity of their nature, swayed their husbands and influenced community politics. Ultimately, the women had promoted a secret Sabbatean to the office of rabbi, and they themselves fell into the trap of his baseless promises. According to his interpretation, this bitter error was a sufficient cause for punishment, and therefore, “midat ha din [the judgmental aspect of the godhead] had stricken the women,” and some of them paid for it with their lives. According to this way of thinking, the women had been pawns in the hands of greater powers, who used them in competition within the religious leadership and in differences of theological opinion.26 The dispute broke out in Altona in early 1751, when Emden effectively foiled the efforts of the community leaders to defend Eybeschütz and to proclaim that the amulets had been carefully examined and found to be free of Sabbatean heresy. According to his version of the chain of events, Emden was well aware that the request for him to express his opinion as one of the members of the special investigatory committee would put him into a predicament from which he could only escape with difficulty. Just a short glance at the copy of an amulet that arrived from Frankfurt and was presented to him in order to ask “whether it was permitted to enter the community of the Lord” was sufficient to astound

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him, because he immediately identified Sabbatean allusions in it. The pressures exerted to change his opinion were heavy. Emissaries came to his house to sound out his position and to mollify him. He begged not to be included in the investigation and declared that he was not hostile to Eybeschütz: “Why should the Rabbi fear me, for I have no quarrel with him, nor am I a magistrate, a minister or a judge over him.” At a meeting that took place on February 2, Emden realized he had fallen into a trap. He was prevailed upon to provide a rabbinical excuse for what he viewed as an unparalleled travesty of the institution of the rabbinate and of the Jewish religion. The major concern of the lay leaders of the community was to quiet matters down and protect the reputation of the rabbi of their community, and Emden refused to be reconciled with that.27 Emden did not attend the second meeting, held on Thursday, February 4. He shut himself up in his house, assailed by doubts. “My soul was very bitter,” he reported. “For I understood that I would not be able to institute anything good and decent for heaven.” His panic increased when one of the emissaries threatened his life in order to silence him: “He warned [Emden] that if it should please his heart to say any small thing against his honor the head of the rabbinical court, he should know that he has a faction and many friends, and they would all come to his house and kill him in his house.” Between Wednesday and Thursday, his distress reached a peak: “That night my sleep evaded me.” Should he cooperate with an act of deception and help sinners? Should he surrender to the threats or cleave to the truth? When worshippers gathered in his house for prayer on that Thursday morning, he had already foreseen the scandal that would develop. He made up his mind to announce his opinion publicly and bypass the community investigation. He had found, without any doubt, that the amulets were tainted “with the heresy of Shabbetai Zevi, may the name of the wicked rot.” Hence, there was no alternative: “I decided that the scribe [who wrote them] is a heretic, no matter who he is, so long as he does not prove to me that I am in error. However, I cannot state that Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz is the man who wrote them. Far be it from me, as I was not an eye-witness.” The community asked Emden to retract his statement, threatening his life, but he was firm in his decision not to be deterred. “I fear God, and aside from Him, I do not fear. What can flesh do to me?” When Emden chose not to betray his soul and to demonstrate his right to freedom of opinion, he knew that he would pay a heavy price. This was a declaration of war against the rabbi of the community, against his hundreds of students, and against the senior rabbis, who were furious about the injury done to a prominent one of their number.28 In less than twenty-four hours, severe and vengeful steps were taken to punish the rebellious rabbi, striking with great accuracy at what was dearest to

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him: the autonomy that had enabled him to live as an independent scholar for nearly two decades. The strength of Eybeschütz’s supporters grew, and in the great synagogue of Altona, the lay leaders rapidly issued a counter-proclamation against that of Emden, banning him: “To distance every person from him with stiff punishment against anyone who approaches within four ells of him.”29 The synagogue in Emden’s house was abolished, he was forbidden to publish books in his private publishing house, and severe house arrest was imposed on him: “They posted guards over me. I could not leave the entrance of my house to go out, nor was any person permitted to come to me in my house, because they surrounded my house with guards day and night, to see who entered and left, and to punish them with fines. I was in this situation for about four months, no one left and no one entered.”30 Emden had tried to construct a way of life for himself that would give him broad freedom of action as an individual, whose special authority and status did not depend on the institutions of the community, in which he held no position. Now he was seen as a threat to the community, and therefore all those special privileges were denied to him. He became a burden and an undesirable citizen. In a short time, with several determined actions, the community succeeded in isolating him, undermining his status, shaming him in public, and imposing its authority upon him, as he could contact his supporters only with great difficulty. During the few hours of Friday, February 5, that his movements were restricted but before he was forbidden to write letters about the affair, he managed to report on it to three rabbis, who became his chief supporters in Germany, France, and Holland. These letters showed neither reservations nor caution. Eybeschütz was reviled as a dangerous offender. Emden’s fury overflowed. The hour was fateful. In those moments of emotional turmoil, after learning he would be punished, he saw himself as a militant martyr in a holy war: “Now is the time to work for the Lord and to uproot this cursed idolatry, which has sent thousands of Jews to the pit of destruction, may the Merciful One save them, and therefore I determined in my heart that I would deliver myself to sanctify the Name of God, no matter what happened to me, because the integrity of the entire Jewish religion depends on it.”It was the sacred and responsible mission of the “great rabbis of the generation,” and there was no room for silence or indifference. The three rabbis to whom he wrote were: Rabbi Joshua Falk (1680–1756) of Frankfurt, author of Pnei Yehoshua and a senior member of the veteran rabbinical elite, who was already past seventy years old and who had suspected Eybeschütz of traces of Sabbateanism for two decades; Rabbi Samuel Hillman (1670–1764), the rabbi of Metz, who was an active participant in revealing the suspect amulets; and Rabbi Arieh Leib of Amsterdam (1690–1755),

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Emden’s brother-in-law. They became the leaders in the campaign to impugn Eybeschütz and to destroy his image as an elevated religious leader, not hesitating to call for his discharge and disqualification for any rabbinical post. Within a few days, news of the affair circulated beyond the communities of northern Germany, and its repercussions spread.31 Despite support from the community establishment, Eybeschütz sensed danger and quickly defended himself. On Sunday, February 21, the rabbi assembled the members of the congregation in the great synagogue of Altona and swore in public that he had never belonged to the Sabbateans. In a long sermon, he rejected the suspicions and argued that he had not violated Halakha, that his entire world was the study of Torah, and that in all his conversations with Christian scholars and clergymen, he had represented the Jewish faith and tradition and opposed the claim of Christian theology that the messiah had already arrived, as well as the argument that the messiah could abolish the commandments. His denial of the Sabbateans was resolute and unequivocal, just like the one he had issued twenty-five years earlier in Prague, to clear himself. Several times during the sermon, he repeated, in the form of an oath: “If there is a hint of heresy in me, perish the thought, to follow the false opinion and belief of the wicked people who follow the chaos of the sect of Shabbetai Zevi, may his name be blotted out, may a fiery flame and sulfur come down from heaven and destroy me, and I excommunicate all the wicked people of the aforementioned sect.” However, regarding suspicion of the amulets he had written, at this stage he offered no explanation or alternate decipherment. He merely rejected it with the excuse that he possessed esoteric knowledge “whose reason is hidden, and no man is privy to their secret.” His enemies were not experts in it like him, and “they walk in darkness regarding the nature of the amulets and hidden things.” He condemned his opponents with the claim that his honor belongs to the public sphere of the rabbis, which is “the honor of the Torah and those who study it.”32 Eybeschütz was convinced that his sworn enemy, Emden, merely wanted an excuse to attack him and that the rumor he was to be appointed rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek had already aroused his envy, because he regarded himself as worthier of the post. His supporters circulated the claim that Emden’s wife had spoken in her husband’s name, saying, “I have already sharpened and whetted a knife to cut his neck when he comes to accept the rabbinate of the three communities.”33 Eybeschütz regarded the scandal that arose in the episode of the amulets as a setback in the splendid course of his life with its many achievements. Like Emden, he had a high opinion of his own worth and concealed his ambition with difficulty. Protection of his soiled honor in the public sphere was an existential goal of the highest order for him. In the age

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of independent personal performance, Rabbi Eybeschütz was also a member of the generation who sought to make a mark and succeed. The introduction to the book that he published toward the end of his life, Kreti ufleti [the rather recondite title comes from 1 Chronicles 18:17], a Halakhic work on part of Yore de’a of the Codex Shulh.an ‘arukh, offers insight into his self-image. In a concise autobiography, Eybeschütz lists some of the stations in his life and recaps his successes: his impressive attainments in Torah study, to which he devoted himself to the point of exhaustion (“I always wearied myself with all my strength and banished sleep from my eyes, by night as by day my study shone for me”); the many students he trained over decades; the license he had received in Prague to print the Talmud, “which had not been done before”; and his defense of the Jewish religion (“I came and went in the courts of their excellencies, ministers and priests and Christian scholars, to dispute with them about our Torah”). He had gained sympathy and admiration, and the proof was that when he was chosen to be the rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, he was barely permitted to leave Metz.34 When the dispute about the amulets broke out, disturbing reports were made public regarding the efforts Eybeschütz had made to gain the rabbinate of Metz. Neh.emia Reischer, the religious judge of the community and the grandson of the previous rabbi, told how his grandmother, Gitl Shapiro, had begged him not to nominate Eybeschütz and to avoid scandal, but at that time her grandson refused to listen to her and was captivated by the charm of his highly praised image. Now he quoted a letter he had received from Eybeschütz, when he wished to increase his chances of being chosen; the letter is embarrassing in its extreme degree of self-promotion, self-praise, and sense of superiority: “At this time, thank God, my nature has gone forth in the world, and there is no one among all the rabbis of my time who would say that he is more worthy of spreading Torah and take forth the precious from the vile (Jer. 15:19) than I.” Eybeschütz wrote further about his high status: “Thank God, while I am in the world there is Torah in Israel, to clarify hard things in the Talmud and the rulings of the ancient and latter Sages, the visible and the hidden.” He went on to say that there was no one with such vast knowledge in areas beyond the world of Torah, as well: “Nature, astronomy, philosophy, geometry, and logic . . . and who is there to whom I may be compared (Isa. 40:25), to measure up with me, lest there be any doubt.”35 Like other complex figures in the eighteenth century, within the very same person were enfolded a scholar and an expert in Halakha, a gifted preacher, a teacher admired and respected by his students, a man thirsty for knowledge who sought the “wisdoms” of the university and contact with Christian

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scholars, and also a daring Kabbalist whose work, Va`avo hayom el ha’ayin [And I Came this Day unto the Fountain], made sexual relations and the secrets of coupling into factors that establish the earthly and divine worlds.36 As we see below, his enemies did not succeed in vanquishing him, even when it appeared that the complex threads of his life were unraveling, and his answers were not convincing. In this respect, Gershom Scholem’s words are very much on target: “Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz was not a simple, innocent man, as his defenders depicted him. Rather chasms yawned within his soul. He lived with deep inner contradiction, and this is what makes him a unique section in his world.”37

“A n d H e Shou ted Ou t Lou d, ‘Sav e m e!’”: E x acer bation of th e E m den-E y be schü tz Dispu te In Emden’s eyes, Eybeschütz took on demonic proportions. Ego collided with ego. He was no less than Satan, against whom “Jacob, the innocent man” waged holy war and was tormented as a victim: “For several years I have been persecuted severely from the persecutor of Israel, poisonous and bitter fruit [Deut. 29:18], to confuse the world . . . from my straits I called to the God, He answered me in an open space (Ps. 118:5), and my soul was plundered.”38 Later in 1751, when the tension of the episode continued to swell, Emden did suffer blow after blow. On April 24, he was excommunicated (“a great and terrible proclamation in public, trumpets of excommunication for slander”) upon the initiative of Rabbi Hayim of Lublin. Shocked by the defamation of his teacher and master, “a gigantic Zaddik, chosen by the Holy, supreme Lord, the light of the Diaspora,” he accused Eybeschütz’s critics of rebellion against the highest rabbinical authority in the Jewish world.39 Meanwhile, spirits were rising, mainly in the communities of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek. Brawls in the street required police intervention to impose public order. The cantor, Arieh Heilbot, who supported Emden, was fired from his post in the great synagogue of Altona and from his position as ritual slaughterer. Another cantor, Moshe Kasevitsch, who had the support of the lay leadership, underwent a shocking experience on May 7, when he approached the pulpit to lead the prayers and was removed by force. “Boys came and seized the cantor and pushed him away with great shame, because they were ordered to by their rabbi,” Emden reported. “And there was a great scandal in the synagogue, because they came to blows, and they raised their hand against the lay leader, Jacob Meir, to beat him and he shouted out loud, ‘Save me!’” Then soldiers came and rescued him, “and they went and brought a unit of men of war with their weapons and they took him out and brought him safely home.” This episode tore the community apart.

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All the supporters of Emden’s party abandoned the synagogue and stopped praying there.40 The air was full of war, fomented with aggressive shouts. More amulets suspected of Sabbateanism arrived from Metz in the early spring, increasing the pressure on the rabbi of the congregation. In the “Epistle of Zeal,” which Eybeschütz composed on May 26, he asked his students to do battle for him and for the honor of God. “All of you are obligated to my honor, which is tantamount to the honor of the Lord,” he wrote, with enormous awareness of his own value, demanding loyalty and urging them on: “This you must do: gather and assemble, each man with his comrade, and help your brethren, and say strongly: stand and rise up, and fight for the Lord and His Torah and the honor of our rabbi… .” He condemned his persecutors as wicked heretics and warned that if any of his students failed to join the struggle, they would betray not only Eybeschütz but also their commitment to religion at all.41 When the “Epistle of Zeal” was dispatched to strengthen the base of support for Eybeschütz, Emden was already out of his enemies’ reach. After hearing how his supporters had been humiliated and attacked in the synagogue, his apprehension had grown, and he believed that his life was in danger: “In a short time they would come to my house and stone me. There was no good for me except in fleeing from this place.”42 With the help of a few confederates, Emden was joined by a young manservant and Heilbot, who had paid with his job for opposing Eybeschütz. He obtained two carriages, and within a week, on Saturday night, between May 15 and May 16 of 1751, he secretly fled from house arrest, leaving Altona in the middle of the night by sneaking past the guards who were around his house. Fearing that his escape might be discovered, he also hired “some gentile guards with fists and clubs in their hands, lest my pursuers harm me.” He made his way to Amsterdam, the city of refuge; his sister and Rabbi Arieh Leib were waiting for him. Emden realized that his forced escape from Altona was an admission that his rivals were stronger than he and his partisans. He described his relatively short trip to Amsterdam as him being driven into exile by threats of violence. In one of the accounts that he composed so that this episode in his life would not be forgotten, he said that since his arrival in Altona twenty years earlier, he had seldom left his house. Thus, it was no wonder that “parting from my house and wife and my sons and my little children was harder for me than death.” His life was in danger. His fate was similar to that of Jacob, who fled from his twin brother, Esau. If he was pursued, he was not caught, but he could hardly bear the hardships of the voyage. In the first volume, we already saw that Emden was very much aware of his body, and in his autobiographical writing, he did not

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refrain from describing his desires and pains in very intimate fashion. In the injuries he underwent, he saw tribulations that only heightened his feelings of victimization. Although spring had come, the weather in mid-May on the way to the Dutch border was stormy, rainy, and cold. The journey was prolonged because “my whole body was ill, and diarrhea assailed me, and I was forced to leave the coach time after time to walk four ells, and I was forced to stop and move my bowels, and the source of my golden tendon opened [i.e., he urinated], which flowed like a fountain, and I was bedridden on that night.” The next day he gathered all his strength, and the three fleeing men crossed the border, reaching Amsterdam via Amersfoort and Noorden. Like Moshe Hayim Luzzatto (1707–1746), who had found refuge from his pursuers sixteen years earlier, now Emden could breathe easily. Though he had been driven from his home, he found freedom in a community that valued him. He was liberated from the siege that had been laid for him, “and they received me with great honor and crowned me with glory, and the notables of Amsterdam as well as the Rabbis of the Sefardim greeted me.”43 Emden lived in Amsterdam for more than a year, but during the entire time he was sunk to the neck in the affair, which only escalated, so that he nearly despaired of returning home to the city where his enemies prevailed: “I wrote to my wife and my friends several times, asking them to try to sell my house and property in Altona, and I agreed to settle in Amsterdam, for my soul rejected bearing the yoke of their unjustified hatred and their harsh fury.”44 The dispute became complex and polyphonous, going far beyond interpretation of the amulets. Emden’s camp believed that the worst thing of all had happened and that an heretic had been revealed in the rabbinical elite. In Poland, however, the supracommunal leadership defended the authority of the rabbis and discipline. In the court of King Fredrick V (1723–1766) in Copenhagen, it was suspected that the Jews were exploiting their communal autonomy, and officials tried to find out what was happening among them. Christian scholars believed they were witnessing a deep and divisive theological dispute about messianism and that Eybeschütz was close to Christianity. The rivals competed for support from the leadership of Polish Jewry, hoping that its authority would tip the balance in their favor. The writ of excommunication issued in Lublin in 1751 went out of its way to praise Eybeschütz: “No secret escapes him in the revealed and the hidden, and the central column of our Torah rests upon him.” It aroused the fury of Emden and his supporters and forced the rabbis and lay leaders of the Council of Four Lands to intervene in the affair. Rabbi Hillman sent them an insulted and angry letter in which he confirmed Eybeschütz’s Sabbatean identity. He also protested because Rabbi

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Hayim of Lublin dared to issue an excommunication and mention the names of three members of the community of Metz, thus impudently trespassing on the legal domain of another community and undermining the common practice in the fabric of relations among the autonomous Jewish frameworks in Europe. Hillman called upon the Council of Four Lands and on the lay leader, Abraham Ben Joseph of Lissa , who was its head, to pass judgment against the rebellious rabbi, or he would arrange to have the rabbis of Germany excommunicate the council. The rabbis of Amsterdam and Rabbi Joshua Heschel of Schwabach, who supported Hillman, pointed out the possible political repercussions and warned against an appeal to the French government, which would make the issue of the amulets into an international conflict. A Polish Jew may not threaten a French Jew, and they had not taken into consideration Rabbi Hayim of Lublin’s wealthy father: “These men [the slandered Jews of Metz who had been excommunicated] would have complained to their highnesses king and his ministers in France that he [the Rabbi] had set his hand to rule over the Jews who live under his [the king] government, and without doubt the emissaries would have been sent out urgently to the king of Poland and the government there, to sue him for raising his hand against the greatness and honor of his highness the king of France.”45 In early autumn, when the representatives of the Council of Four Lands met in Konstantynow, both sides increased pressure, and contradictory documents piled up on their desks. Emden wrote a long letter to the delegates demanding that the council should not only punish Rabbi Hayim but also join in the holy war against Eybeschütz, and, by virtue of its authority as a powerful Jewish leadership body, it must enlist support throughout the world and initiate comprehensive excommunication proceedings against all the Sabbateans. Eybeschütz himself was reviled as a dangerous Sabbatean responsible for suspect amulets, as a man who had underhandedly usurped the rabbinate of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek with the support of “the ignorant poor,” as a criminal against the government who had betrayed the Austrian regime and who was therefore forbidden to enter its territory, and even as a person responsible for the expulsion of the Jews of Prague—hence he deserved every possible curse and ban.46 At first the response of the Polish leadership was hesitant. It was easy to accept the demand to reprimand the rabbi from Lublin and evade responsibility for the excommunication; they could argue that it had not been approved by the Council of Four Lands and therefore was not valid. However, it was much harder to adopt an unequivocal position regarding Eybeschütz, and they tended to remain neutral. What appeared to be cautious support for the demand of Hillman, Emden, and other opponents of Eybeschütz at the council at

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Konstantynow was overturned in a short time. The leader of the council himself wrote to Altona that it was inconceivable to humiliate the respected rabbi. In later assemblies, it became clear that Eybeschütz’s supporters were gaining, and the supracommunal organization of the Jews of Poland was divided in its opinion. Two years later, at a meeting of the council in Jaroslaw in the autumn of 1753, writings reviling Eybeschütz were publicly burned, and it was forbidden to publish criticism of him, because he was free of all guilt and “one must not think ill of him, and those who do are as if they think ill of the Shekhina.” On the initiative of the shtadlan (intercessor), Baruch Meeretz Yavan, the Polish minister of finance, Karol Sedlnicki (1703–1761) intervened in the affair and demanded that the rabbi who excommunicated Emden and Falk should be put on trial. “You are all concerned with matters of petty cash, and you pay no heed to your faith,” He argued. And Baruch remarked ironically to Emden, “Woe to the generation when the sages of the nations rebuke the rabbis of Poland . . . for this [minister] appreciates something of the Jewish religion.”47 Falk, the elderly rabbi of Frankfurt, exerted the most pressure in Central Europe against Eybeschütz. He devoted the last five years of his life to the struggle against what he regarded as the greatest threat against the Jewish religion. Like Emden, he paid a personal price for this. The criticism leveled against his position was connected to another prolonged conflict between two factions of the community (the Kann and Kulp families), and he chose to leave Frankfurt in order to retain his freedom of action. Falk did not hesitate to address Eybeschütz directly, asking him to repent and confess to the sin of Sabbateanism and preventing the dispute from growing deeper. Falk wrote to his adversary, saying “Heaven is between me and yourself,” to demonstrate the unbridgeable chasm that yawned between them: “All the principles of the fundamentals of the religion and faith separate the two of us and the wall upon which the House of Israel stands.” In concert with Rabbi Hillman of Metz and Rabbi Leib of Amsterdam, he launched a campaign to remove Eybeschütz from office. They had no doubt of his guilt. They proclaimed it was necessary “to ban and ostracize and curse and revile that man, who produced the texts of those abominable amulets.” They summoned him to appear before a tribunal and respond to the accusations. Finally, on March 12, 1753, since these demands were not fulfilled, Falk wrote to the heads of Altona to say they had no alternative except to remove him from the office of rabbinate and to revoke his authority and title.”48 The circles of those involved in the affair grew wider, and the turmoil gave rise to fears. In the summer of 1751, the community of Nikolsburg decided to support Eybeschütz without reservation and demanded “not to cause any sorrow in the world to that Zaddik.” They also took his great power into

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consideration and were careful not to provoke his many students: “It is to be feared lest all the herds of the students of this great sage, the aforementioned famous Zaddik, in all the cities that are dispersed in their hundreds and thousands . . . [will unite] to protest the insult to their rabbi.” In that case, there would be a great tumult in every country and every state to take revenge for their rabbi, and it would no longer be possible to extinguish the flames. The leaders of the community of Moravia were also disturbed because the internal dispute had become a sensation and a fascinating news item whose details were spread, to great shame, before a broad readership: “For there is no desecration of the Name of God greater than that, for our many sins, woe to the ears that hear it, and it is worthy to tear up a bad rumor like this, which is already spoken of in public and the Gentiles mocked them.”49 Dozens of articles dealt with the dispute around the Sabbatean amulets in the newspapers of northern Germany, bringing the affair into the public arena and making it into a dispute that tore apart the Jews of Europe. There was great thirst for knowledge about the Jews, and the newspapers, mostly in German but also in Polish, competed to see who could obtain reliable and up-to-date information. Thus, for example, it was reported form Altona in the Göttingen newspaper in April 1752: “A dispute that arose among the Jews of our locality concerning the man called the Rabbi Eybeschütz of Metz, has so far attracted so much attention, that we thought our readers would also be desirous of knowing something exact about it. We can report to them reliably about the main points of the dispute, according to information from both sides that has reached one of the reporters for this newspaper.”50 In the newspaper of Schleswig-Holstein, the story of the dispute was published in ten pages as a feature article in midNovember 1752: “It is known that no dispute is more violent than one touching upon religion,” for both sides fight to the end in sake for their truth. A dispute of this kind had broken out among the Jews, arousing great excitement. The readers should know about its roots in the messianic movement of Shabbetai Zevi and the recent events in Altona.51 The inner divisions in Jewish life were revealed. Struggles within the leadership were displayed the way the threads binding the amulets had been unraveled, and hidden, mysterious, esoteric knowledge was made available to curious readers.52 Within a short time, it turned out that the authority to decide in religious disputes had passed to the government institutions, and the high price of the internal dispute was further erosion of communal autonomy. “Our side,” as Emden called the party that supported him, was the one that drew the king of Denmark and the Senate of Hamburg into the Jewish streets of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek and into the Kabbalistic texts of the amulets. In addition

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to newspaper reports, the affair was ultimately brought before governmental and judiciary bodies in Copenhagen and Hamburg because of the appeals of Mordecai Hecksher, an embittered lay leader who had been discharged for expressing doubt regarding the rabbi’s fitness, and those of Emden’s wife, who begged that justice should be done for her husband so he could return home, as well as claims that Eybeschütz was adopting customs of royalty and the community leadership had exceeded its authority. The results were very successful for Emden, and it appeared that the king acknowledged the injustice that had been done him. He was permitted to return to Altona from his exile and to operate his printing shop once again with a royal privilege. Eybeschütz was required to supply answers to certain questions regarding the amulets, and the Senate removed him from office. On Friday evening, 24 Av, 5512 (August 4, 1752), Emden returned victorious from Amsterdam. He had left in a panic under the cover of night, and now he was returning in the light of a summer day: “As I went through the great city of Hamburg, a little after noon, when the sun was shining, and the weather nice, and the entire city was stunned by my passing through. Before my door [was] an official of the city, ministers rose and rejoiced to see [me], and some of the Gentiles gave praise upon hearing the news.”53 In the end, this rejoicing was short-lived and premature. His hopes to receive compensation for his losses were also set aside.54 The reversal was swift and sharp. The counterpressure on the authorities was effective and successful. The publication of a pamphlet in German by a Hebraist from the University of Helmstadt, Karl Anton (1722–?), had decisive influence, changing the course of events completely. Anton, formerly Moshe Gershon Cohen, had been Eybeschütz’s student in Prague. His “Short History of the Messiah Sabbatai Zevi,” which was published in the late summer of 1752, received much attention in the German press. The convert told the story of the messianic Sabbatean movement, presented the life story of Eybeschütz, and explained the apparent error of his opponents in the interpretation they gave to the text of the amulets. The reader could be impressed by the biography of a diligent, wise, and beloved Jewish rabbi. His successful rabbinical career could have continued to rise, were it not for obstacles placed in his path by enemies such as Emden, who desired his rabbinical position and embittered his life.55 The splendid dedication of the pamphlet to Fredrick V of Denmark inspired the king to reexamine the dispute in Altona, though it is quite unlikely that the king himself read Anton’s pamphlet. Fredrick was in his late twenties and was a weak king, a hedonist, an alcoholic, and a womanizer who left matters of government in the hands of several capable ministers. Emden stated that the changes in Copenhagen’s policy were quite capricious and connected with the

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new queen, the Duchess Juliana Maria of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1729– 1796), the niece of Friedrich II of Prussia. According to Emden’s interpretation, the change in Copenhagen’s policy regarding the dispute originated with the queen, one of whose intimates was a partisan of Eybeschütz’s from Braunschweig; thus, he maintained, a new indirect channel opened up for his rivals to influence Danish policy.56 In 1753, several decisive directives were issued from Copenhagen, all of which demanded the prompt conclusion of the dispute. Eybeschütz was called upon to swear allegiance to the state, he was afforded protection, and it was forbidden to slander him. He was once again appointed as the rabbi of Altona, and the precarious seat of the rabbinate was stabilized again. Active participation in the dispute became a crime against the kingdom, punishable by a fine, and the process of internal mediation initiated by the rabbis opposed to Eybeschütz was blocked.57 The intervention of the authorities and the public revelation of the affair had a paralyzing influence on the effort to resolve it within the framework of rabbinical leadership. Eybeschütz’s opponents sought to bring him before a religious court. For his part, Eybeschütz expressed willingness, conditional on it being a sympathetic forum such as the rabbis of Istanbul, who had expressed unreserved support for him. In the summer of 1752, Ezekiel Landau (1714–1793), the young rabbi of Yampol, Ukraine, sent a letter to the communities prominent in the dispute in Germany, France, Holland, and Moravia to propose a compromise that would avoid excommunicating Eybeschütz and dealing a mortal blow to the rabbinate while also bringing him to voluntarily cease writing amulets. Landau criticized both parties and showed a forgiving attitude to Eybeschütz, suggesting that the amulets were forgeries. However, he also asked him to detach himself from the Sabbateans who regarded him as their leader. With his understanding of the far-reaching consequences of the affair, he expressed a searing feeling of shame because of the schadenfreude: “What will be the end of this affair? It is already known among the gentiles, and, for our many sins, they say, ‘Look, the House of Judah is like the other nations,’ and such are the roots of their religion and the foundations of their faith, that the sages of Israel disagree about them, by which we had been distinguished from all the nations on the face of the earth, and now our faces are covered with shame.”58 Within a short time, Eybeschütz’s victory over his rivals was complete. Those who wished to remove him from office had failed. He never appeared before a religious court to give an accounting for his amulets. The kingdom of Denmark forbade attacking him. In Poland, as we have seen, he received the support of the Council of Four Lands, and writings against him were condemned to be burned. All Emden could do was say bitterly that Eybeschütz had purchased the

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support of the corrupt Polish leadership: “We know clearly how many thousand pieces of gold he sent to Poland to buy signatures for him on writs of excommunication that he issued in Altona.” The leadership was notorious, he said, for purchasing rabbinical posts for money and for a tyrannical attitude to the masses, and thus it had no moral standing.59 Deepening its involvement in processes of the Jewish autonomy, in early 1754, the Danish government authorized the extension of Eybeschütz’s tenure for three more years, and in parallel, it pressured the Senate in Hamburg to restore his juridical authority there. In 1755, he published his full version of the affair, including dozens of letters supporting him. He, too, understood very well the power of printing in the conflicting versions, and he explained that “the principal reason why I printed the foregoing is that, for our many sins, libelous pamphlets printed against me are truly in every person’s hands, and it is clear that their hand is still ready to print hell and damnation. . . . Therefore, if these writings were not printed, no one would know all this, and, perish the thought, the entire nation would be in error.” He boasted about the extensive support he had received from rabbis and from new figures such as Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, the Vilna Gaon whose “fame is known in all of Poland and in Berlin and in Lissa.” Sure of his victory, Eybeschütz could both permit himself to appear in public opinion as a victim and also announce that he forgave his enemies, wishing to leave the embarrassing past behind him.60 In the summer of 1755, Emden suffered severe humiliation when five of his enemies in Altona broke into his house, accompanied by policemen and armed with a search warrant. Eybeschütz’s partisans still regarded the texts printed in pamphlets and books as a threat that had to be eliminated, although in every other respect, he faced no real danger to his status. The search warrant was intended primarily to locate and confiscate Aqitsat ‘aqrab (The Sting of the Scorpion), one of the bluntest and most direct of Emden’s polemical writings against “the old reprobate, that evil heretic, persecutor of the Jews.” The forty pages of this pamphlet, which was mainly written in Amsterdam and apparently printed when Emden returned to Altona, brought together the accusations against Eybeschütz’s Sabbatean amulets. The pamphlet was also a grave personal indictment, challenging his abilities as a rabbi and his integrity and condemning him repeatedly as “an enemy of the religion.”61 At noon on Friday, the 3 of Av (July 11), Emden’s fortress was breached, and a violent band headed by Mendel Speyer, “the chief hooligan,” invaded his study on the second floor and the printing shop and the library on the third floor, poked around in his manuscripts and letters, and confiscated some of them. Emden was stunned, he reported, and was afraid they would beat or kill him.

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The five men treated his home as if it was theirs, “dancing in my room like goats, looking through my treasures, my volumes of study and my manuscripts, and all the many writings and epistles lying on the bookshelves.” The commotion in his household was huge. His pregnant wife and one of the servant women were shocked and needed to be bled. At the last moment, with the assistance of his printing lad, Moshe Bonn, he managed to conceal the copies of ‘Aqitsat ‘aqrav, and, despite the search, they were not discovered. The writings that had been confiscated were returned after a long trial before the judicial authorities, but those hours left a deep scar. The emotional intensity of the dispute and the residue of hatred were so great that all the barriers of respect and courtesy collapsed. Frustrated by their failure to find the dangerous ‘Aqitsat ‘aqrav, the five men entered Emden’s room and threatened him, telling him he could not escape their pursuit and he had better flee from Altona. Speyer cursed him coarsely: “You’re in our hands to do what we want with you, and if we rip your flesh away, that won’t be enough at all. Who are you? Do you think you can compare yourself to our rabbi? You aren’t even worth his manure, which is better than you.” In his memoirs, Emden reported that he felt helpless and stunned by the impertinence and violence of the young man, who had no respect for him. He just stood “like a ewe before her shearers, hearing my insults and saying nothing in reply.”62 More than five years after Emden proclaimed his suspicion of the writer of the Sabbatean amulets in his synagogue, he was crushed by the weight of the affair. In 1756, his defeat appeared to be absolute. As noted, Denmark’s policy made Eybeschütz invulnerable. His great rival, Joshua Falk, died and was buried in Frankfurt. The theologian and Orientalist, David Megerlin (1698–1778), fortified Eybeschütz’s defenses in a work entitled Secret Proofs of the Truth of the Christian Religion, arguing that it was proper for the Christian world to support Eybeschütz. In the foreword to his book, dedicated to King Fredrick V, he wrote that he could demonstrate to the king that the amulets attributed to Eybeschütz prove that he “was one of us,” and that was why he was persecuted by the Jews.63 Emden could only append this argument to the detailed catalog in his severe indictment, commenting ironically, “They are fond of him now, because he is a secret Christian.”64 That winter, the Danish authorities took an extraordinary measure and ordered the community to hold an election of personal confidence. Whereas the choice of the rabbi of the community was ordinarily in the hands of a restricted forum of lay leaders, in light of the dispute, all the taxpaying men were summoned to take part in a referendum, and the vast majority voted in support of Eybeschütz’s continuation in office. On December 1, 1756, the Senate in Hamburg submitted to Danish pressure and rescinded its earlier

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decision. Thus Eybeschütz regained all his positions of power and resumed rabbinical leadership of the three communities. During Hanukkah of 5517, a strange, carnivalesque victory procession, apparently organized by the rabbi’s sons, paraded past Emden’s house. A merry libertine ball was held in the victor’s home, and in the streets of Altona, the celebrants rode in coaches drawn by horses and trumpets were sounded in the procession. The victorious rabbi did all of this, Emden summarized bitterly, “to make his honor public, because his crown had returned to him.”65 Contrary to expectations, restoration of the office of the rabbinate of the north German community to Eybeschütz, with broad popular support under governmental protection, did not guarantee him supremacy in the prolonged dispute, with its many ups and downs. The wheel of the affair continued to spin, and it soon became clear that the celebration had been outward, vulgar, and premature. Eybeschütz soon found himself besieged, and his faction found it difficult to keep defending him while the indefatigable Emden continued to strike at him by means of the printed word, for nothing deterred him in this battle, which he saw as fateful. To the great alarm of the Jewish leadership in Poland, as we shall see below, a radical Sabbatean sect was discovered, and the Council of Four Lands turned to Emden as the senior expert and asked his advice. Moreover, a successful arranged marriage between Emden’s daughters and two heads of the council was very useful to him in improving relations and changing attitudes. Esther was married to the son of Abraham Jaski, a lay leader of the Council of Four Lands, and Neh.ama was married to the son of Baruch Meeretz Yavan, the intercessor who had constantly supported Emden. In a pamphlet of innocent appearance, he placed his answer to the question of the Council of Four Lands. He encouraged them to do everything they could to condemn the Sabbateans by making their heresy public before the Christian world, going so far as “to deliver them to the authorities and have them burned.” Contrary to Anton and Megerlin, he claimed that the Sabbateans were not Christians but heretics who endangered both Judaism and Christianity.66 One source of Eybeschütz’s weakness was the shame caused by his young son, Wolf (1740–1807). In 1759, he headed a group of mystics in Altona and made use of great wealth that he had accrued to lead an ostentatious, hedonistic, and libertine life in an aristocratic mansion. Emden gathered much evidence about Wolf and had no doubt that he was a Sabbatean. This was shown, for example, when he celebrated the fast day of Nine of Av in religious ecstasy: “On the past ninth of Av the young man prayed at his idolatrous altar, [reciting] the additional prayer for holidays, as is the custom of their [i.e., the Sabbateans’] festival, and afterward he behaved as though possessed by a demon, fell to the

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ground for six hours, and the demon spoke from his mouth.”67 In a letter sent from Altona by Pesah. Ben Joshua, a young scholar who had approached this group but was repelled by its leader’s messianic pretensions, he urged Rabbi Landau, who had just finished a fourth year in the rabbinate of Prague, to protest. Landau assured him that he took a severe view of it and would send a letter to Eybeschütz and demand that he admonish his son and prevent the group of young men from studying Kabbalah. He threatened that if his words were ignored, “instead of desecrating the Name of God, I will not honor that rabbi, and I will do what is within my power.”68 The rumors about Wolf Eybeschütz’s wanton ways, his free relations with women, and his falling into debt added weight to the pressure exerted on his father. In 1759, Eybeschütz apparently began to plan his flight from Altona. The city of refuge he chose was Prague, where he had many followers. He secretly appealed to Vienna through the Danish embassy, officially asking the queen, Maria Theresa, to rescind the decision that prohibited him from entering the territory of the Habsburg Empire because of the claim that he had supported the French in the War of Austrian Succession. Had there been an intention to consider granting him permission, it was thwarted by a petition submitted to the Queen of Austria by the Rabbi of Prague. This petition was vigorous and unequivocal. He wrote that not only had Eybeschütz been disloyal to Austria in the 1740s, he was also pursued by the Jews everywhere because of his immoral way of life and his Sabbatean heresy, and the rabbis of central communities in Europe had already excommunicated him. Were the controversial rabbi to return to Prague, this would upset the stability of Jewish society and cause rifts and discontent. As the chief rabbi of the community, Landau wrote, he could not live in the same city as Eybeschütz.69 What had begun as a disagreement about routine magical practices turned into a confrontation among the rabbinical elite and a drama whose scenes were acted before public opinion, and it ended after a decade with a decision by the Austrian government on April 3, 1762, to close the borders of the empire to the rabbi, who was persona non grata. The significance of this deep dispute is conveyed by this brief note, which does not conceal the harshness of the blow: “Ezekiel Landau, the Chief Rabbi of Prague, submitted an appeal to deny the petition of Jonathan Eybeschütz, that he might be permitted to return to Prague.”70

Note s 1. Simon Dubnow, ed., Pinqas hamedina o pinqas va’ad haqehilot harashiot bemedinat lita (Berlin: Ayanot, 1925), 257–278.

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2. Ismar Freund, Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preussen (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1912), 22–60. 3. Jacob Emden wrote several versions of the proclamation in the synagogue: Jacob Emden, Vayaqem ‘edut beya’aqov, Altona, 1762, fols. 6a–7b; Sefer hitavqut, Altona, 1762–1769, 18a; idem, Igeret purim, MS in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, MS. 2190, photocopy in the Gershom Scholem library, the National Library in Jerusalem, 14a. See Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1897), note 7, 510–524; Shmuel Ettinger, “Hapulmus emden-eybeschits leora shel hahistoriografia hayehudit,” Qabala 9 (Los Angeles: A Cherub Press Publication, 2003), 329–392. 4. Dubnow, Pinqas hamedina, 258. 5. See Moshe Rosman, “Lehiyot isha yehudiya bepolin-lita bereshit ha’et hah.adasha,” in Qiyum veshever, yehudei polin ledoroteihem II, ed. Yisrael Bartal and Yisrael Gutman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 415–434; Imanuel Etkes, Lita biyerushalayim (Jerusalem: Yad ben Zvi, 1991), 40–84; Gershon David Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatow in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 6. See Johann Philipp von Carosi, Reisen durch verschiedene polnische Provinzen (Leipzig: Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, 1781), 238–239; Raphael Mahler, Toldot hayehudim bepolin (Merh.avia: Sifriat Poalim, 1946), 268. 7. Dubnow, Pinqas hamedina, 258. The quotations from the inquest of June 1759 showing the sexual exploitation of servant women are presented in Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town, 72–74. 8. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: Schocken, 1971), 23. 9. See Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 52–53. On the peddler women regulation in Lithuania see Mahler, Toldot hayehudim bepolin, 266–288; Rosman, “Lehiyot isha yehudiya bepolin-lita,” 429–430; Yemima H.ovav, ‘Alamot ahevukha: h.ayei hadat veharuah. shel nashim bah.evra haashkenazit bereshit ha’et hah.adasha (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009), 248–249. 10. Dubnow, Pinqas hamedina, 257–258. 11. Bylaw of the Council in Sluck, 1761; Dubnow, Pinqas hamedina, 270. 12. Freund, Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preussen, 22–23. 13. Friedrich der Grosse, Das Politische Testament von 1752 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1974); Richard Dietrich, ed., Die politischen Testamenten der Hohenzollern (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1986), 301, 313–315. 14. On the deliberations prior to the general privilege and on its drafts, see Ludwig Geiger, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin, 2 (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 1871), 281–301.

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15. A collection of the documents from the correspondence of various governmental bodies may be found in Selma Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, 32. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 222–249. 16. See Miriam Bodian, “Hayazamim hayehudim beberlin, hamedina haabsolutistit ve’shipur matsavam haezrah.i shel hayehudim’ bemah.atsit hashniya shel hameah hayod-h.et,” Zion 49 (1984): 159–184. 17. Israel Halperin, ed., Taqanot medinat mehrin (Jerusalem: Hevrat Mekizei Nirdamim, 1952); Willibald Müller, Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der mähr. Judenschaft im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Olmütz: Laurenz Kullil, 1903), 81–102; Shimon Dubnow, Divrei yemei ‘am ‘olam (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965), 186–187; Michael L. Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 40–46. 18. See Shlomo Tsevi Lieben, “Leqorot hayehudim beprag mishnat 5504 ‘ad 5514 [1744–1754],” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 3 (1905): 31–59 (esp. 47–49). 19. Lieben, “Leqorot hayehudim beprag,” 66–67. 20. Israel Heilperin, ed., Tosafot umiluim lepinqas medinat lita (Jerusalem: Salomon, 1935), 66–67. 21. See Pawel Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere: The EmdenEibeschütz Controversy Reconsidered,” in Early Modern Culture and Haskalah: Reconsidering the Borderlines of Modern Jewish History, Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch-Yearbook 6, ed. Shmuel Feiner and David Ruderman (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 135–154. 22. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fols. 10–11; Vayaqem ‘edut beya’aqov, fol. 3. See Mortimer J. Cohen, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy (Philadelphia: Dropsie College, 1937). 23. The amulets and their decoding were published anonymously in 1752 (probably by Neh.emia Reischer), Sefat emet velashon zehorit (Altona), 1752. 24. Gershom Scholem, “’Al qamea’ eh.ad shel r. yehonatan eibeshits uferushu ‘alav,” Meh.qerei shabtaut (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), 707–733. 25. Jonathan Eybeschütz, Sefer luh.ot ‘edut, ed. Lemberg 1858 (Altona 1756), fols. 14a, 218a. 26. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fols. 5b-6a; Igeret purim, fol. 2b. 27. See Cohen, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy, 126–128. 28. The three detailed sources for Emden’s version of the events of February 1751, from which the quotations are taken: ‘Edut beya’aqov, fols. 4–7; Sefer hitavqut, fols. 15–18; Igeret purim. 29. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fol. 19a. 30. Emden, ‘Edut beya’aqov, fol. 8b. 31. Emden’s letter to Shmuel Hillman, Sefat emet velashon zehorit, no page number, and see Cohen, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy, 130–140.

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32. Eybeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut, fols. 80b–88a. 33. Jacob Emden, Sefer meteg leh.amor in Sefer shimush, Amsterdam 1758–1722, fol. 10a. 34. Jonathan Eybeschütz, Sefer kreti ufelti, part I, Altona 1763, introduction by the author. 35. Letter from Neh.emia Reischer to Jacob Emden, Sefat emet velashon zehorit. 36. See Pawel Maciejko, ed., Va`avo hayom el ha’ayin: quntras beqabala ler. Yohonatan eibeshits (Los Angeles: Cherub Press Publication, 2014). 37. See Scholem, Leqet margaliot (leha’arakhat hasanegoria hah.adasha ‘al r. yonatan eibeshits), Meh.qerei shabtaut, 686–706. 38. Emden, Sefer meteg lah.amor, fol. 10a. 39. The excommunication was proclaimed in the synagogues on 29 Nisan 5511 (1751), and it was registered the following day. See Eybeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut, fol. 34b–35b; Israel Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 341–525, I, (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990), 339–340; Cohen, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy, 161–162 40. Emden, ‘Edut beya’aqov, fol. 9a; Sefer hitavqut, fol. 24b. 41. Eybeschütz, “Igeret qin’ah,” Luh.ot ‘edut, fols. 59–61. 42. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fol. 24b. 43. On Emden’s choice of Amsterdam, see Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. Abraham Bick (Jerusalem: Moreshet Jerusalem, 1979), 229–231, 276–279 (from “Igeret purim”); Sefer hitavqut, fols. 24–25; “Igeret purim,” fol. 28; ‘Edut beya’aqov, fol. 9b; Cohen, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy, 149–150. 44. Emden, ‘Edut beya’aqov, fol. 10a. 45. The letters dating from the months of May and June 1751 are collected in Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 340–346. 46. Emden, ‘Edut beya’aqov, fols. 32-ff; Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 346–355. 47. The various writings appear in Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 355–397. See Pawel Maciejko, “Baruch Yavan and the Frankist Movement: Intercession in an Age of Upheaval,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 4 (2005): 333–354. 48. See Shnayer Z. Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: The Stance of Rabbi Jacob Joshua Falk in the Emden-Eibeschutz Controversy,” in Rabbinic Culture and its Critics, ed. D. Frank and M. Goldish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 435–456. Falk’s letter to Eybeschütz (28 Nisan 5511) was printed in Sefat emet velashon zehorit. 49. The proclamation of support for Eybeschütz, which was issued in Nikolsburg, was published in Hashah.ar 12 (1884), 185–188. 50. Göttingische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen (38. Stück, Erste Zugabe zum Aprilmonat, 1752), 394–396. 51. Schleswig-Holsteinsche Anzeigen, Montag, November 20, 1752, 738–747. On the repercussions of the controversy in the press and its meaning, see Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere,” 138–144.

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52. See Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere,” 138–144. 53. Emden, Megilat sefer, 229–231, 278–279; ‘Edut beya’aqov, fol. 10b; Mortimer, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy, 196–202. 54. Emden, Megilat sefer, 230. 55. See Karl Anton, Kurze Nachricht von dem falsche Messias Sabbathai Zebhi und den neulich seinetwegen in Hamburg und Altona entandenenden Bewegungen (Wolfenbüttel: Meissner, 1752); Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 215–217; Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere,” 144–151. For a critical article, see R. M. Isaac, “Hamburg,” Freye Urtheile und Nachrichten zum Aufnehmen der Wissenschaften und der Historie überhaupt 83 (October 27, 1752), 662–664. 56. Emden, Megilat sefer, 231; Sefer hitavqut, fol. 27b. 57. See Mortimer, Jacob Emden, ch. 10; Mordecai Halevi Horowitz, Rabanei Frankfurt (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1972), 104–105. 58. See Shneur Zalman Leiman, “’Igeret shlomim’ lerabi yeh.ezqel landau,” in Lo yasur shevet miyehuda: hanhaga, rabanut veqehila betoldot yisrael, meh.qarim mukdashim leprof. shimon shvartsfuks, ed. Yosef Hacker and Yaron Harel (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2011), 316–331; Shnayer Z. Leiman, “Rabbi Ezekiel Landau: Letter of Reconciliation,” Tradition 43, no. 4 (2010): 85–96; Shnayer Z. Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: R. Ezekiel Landau’s Attitude Toward R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz in the Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy,” in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism, ed. J. Neusner, E. S. Freirichs, and N. Sarna (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 179–194. 59. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fols. 25b-36a. 60. Eybeschütz, Sefer luh.ot ‘edut. On the letter from the Gaon of Vilna, see Shnayer Z. Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: The Stance of the Gaon of Vilna in the Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy,” in Me’ah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isidor Twersky, ed. Ezra Fleischer et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 251–263. 61. Jacob Emden, ‘Aqitsat ‘aqrav, Amsterdam (probably Altona), 1753. 62. Emden, Megilat sefer, 235–244; Sefer ‘edut beya’aqov, fols. 17–18. 63. David Friedrich Megerlin, Geheime Zeugnüsse vor die Wahrheit der Christlichen Religion (Frankfurt: [n.p.], 1756). See Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere,” 148–154. 64. Emden, Sefer ‘edut beya’aqov, fols. 20–21. 65. Emden, Sefer ‘edut beya’aqov, fol. 33a; Megilat sefer, 245. 66. Jacob Emden, Sefer seder ‘olam rabbah vezutra umegilat ta’anit, Hamburg 1557, fols. 32–36; Megilat sefer, 245–247. 67. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fols. 50a-b. See Judah Liebes, “H.ibur belashon hazohar ler. Wolf ben r. yehonatan eibeshits ‘al h.avurato ve’al sod hageula,” Sod

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haemuna hashabtait (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1995), 109–122; Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 113–114. 68. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fols. 51–52; Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy,” 184–185. On Ezekiel Landau and his conclusions in response to the Sabbatean controversy, see Maoz Kahana, Mehanoda’ beyehuda lah.atam sofer (Jerusalem, The Zalman Shazar Center, 2015), chs. 1–2. 69. See Heinrich Graetz, “Ezechiel Landau’s Gesuch an Maria Theresia gegen Jonathan Eibescütz,” Montatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 26 (1877): 17–25; Ettinger, “Hapulmus emden-eibeshits leora shel hahistoriografia hayehudit,” 344–345. 70. See Josef Mieses, “Beiträge zu Jonathan Eibeschuetz’ Biographie,” Mitteilungen für jüdische Volkskunde 21 (1919): 29–30; Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy,” 185–186.

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THE SPECTER Earthquake, the Horror of War, and Patriotism

In December 1756, when Jonathan Eybeschütz’s enthusiastic supporters celebrated what appeared to be their victory in an internal Jewish conflict with a military-style parade in Altona, a long and extensive war was being waged for a number of months in Europe and the New World—a war that would take a heavy toll in lives and wealth. Eybeschütz might have secretly asked Maria Theresa to revoke his banishment from her empire in the midst of that war because he believed that the surprising political and military alliance between Austria and France would retroactively mitigate his guilt, as during the previous war in the 1740s, he had supported a country that had now ceased to be an enemy. Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, in contrast to Eybeschütz and his ostensibly unpatriotic behavior, made threats of excommunication by virtue of his rabbinical authority and went out of his way in his petition to demonstrate his loyalty to Maria Theresa and convince her to see to it personally that the Jews of Prague should do their duty as citizens during the tense time of the Prussian siege of the city in 1757.1 The Hebrew chronicle Qorot ha’itim (History of the Times), by Abraham Trebitsch (1760–?) of Moravia, included the history of the Jews in general and especially those of the Habsburg Empire in European political and military history. It accorded the dispute about the amulets its relative local weight in the 1750s compared to two central events that shocked the continent: the Seven Years’ War, waged in blood-soaked battlefields, and the destructive earthquake in Portugal, which left widespread destruction and tens of thousands of victims, arousing a wave of fear. “In the year 5516 (1756 in their calendar) began the great war between the queen Maria Theresa and the king of Prussia, Friedrich II, and it continued for seven straight years, and everyone calls it Siebenjährige

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Krieg.” This was while Europe was in a turmoil, still trying to digest what had happened less than a year ago: “The year 5516, 1755 in their calendar, there was a huge earthquake and movement of the earth in the great city of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, which is on the banks of the great river Tejo. [It] was shaken to the foundations, its strongholds fell, the houses and palaces and towers were a wasteland, and more than thirty-thousand souls died in that dreadful earthquake.”2

Th e Nat u r a l Disa ster in Lisbon a n d th e Te st of Sci ence a n d Di v ine J ustice Reverend Charles Davy (1722/3–1797), a British clergyman, was sitting at his desk on November 1, 1755, in his house in Lisbon, when the walls began to shake wildly, the stories above him collapsed, and he heard “a strange frightful kind of noise under ground, resembling the hollow distant rumbling of thunder” breaking from the bosom of the earth. In alarm, he wandered about the streets with other survivors, some of whom had fled from the churches during the mass for All Souls Day. Men and women from every class fell to their knees, prayed, and shouted, “Misericórdia, meu Deus!” Aftershocks threw down more churches and buildings, and then shouts were heard: “The sea is coming! We shall all be lost.” A huge tidal wave flooded the coast, sweeping away people and objects. Ships in the harbor were carried away and capsized, a new pier disappeared under the water, and a third earthquake and another tsunami pursued those who were fleeing. At the same time hundreds of fires broke out, “the whole city appeared in a blaze.” Reporting what he had seen with his own eyes, Davy stated that the fires did not abate for six days. Meanwhile, gangs of robbers swarmed over the broken buildings, and escaped prisoners plundered whatever they could. People digging in the ruins were crushed. About sixty thousand out of a population of a quarter of a million were killed, and the “extensive and opulent city” was nothing “but a vast heap of ruins.” In an instant, the rich and the poor became partners in their plight, and thousands of desperate families, who had enjoyed a life of comfort just a day before, were scattered about in the fields, wanting every conveniency of life and finding none able to relieve them.3 This natural disaster was huge indeed, although the number of victims was apparently less than half of Davy’s estimate. About a third of the city’s buildings were destroyed, including dozens of churches, the royal opera house, and the palace of King José I (1714–1777), who fortunately was away from Lisbon with his family. The palace of the Inquisition was also destroyed, as were works of art and libraries. Aftershocks and tidal waves also affected places hundreds of

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kilometers distant from the epicenter of the earthquake, even several months afterward. The earthquake in Lisbon took place at twenty minutes to nine in the morning. At two, tremors had already reached England. Settlements on the coast of Spain, Morocco, and Northern Italy were damaged. The surface of the canals in Holland and rivers in southern France rose, along with lakes in Switzerland.4 These physical repercussions on the European continent were only one dimension of what developed into a natural disaster of modern significance. The press reported about the earthquake to thousands of readers in Spanish, French, English, and German, making it into a news sensation. Among scholars, theologians, and philosophers, a lively discussion arose regarding the meaning of the tragedy. Louis de Jaucourt (1704–1779), the prolific contributor to the Encyclopédie, wrote that the account “makes even those nations tremble, who are sheltered from its damage. . . . This tragical phenomenon, which provokes thought among curious minds and inspires tears among sensitive souls”.5 A wave of fear spread from Lisbon and engulfed all of Europe. This was the most overwhelming news that had so far been heard in the century. Within two to three weeks, reports from Portugal reached all the countries in Central and Western Europe by sea and by land. The newspaper coverage and the publication of pamphlets with eyewitness accounts quickly brought the story of the earthquake to a broad public by the channels of communication made possible by printing. With dramatic and emotionally charged rhetoric, it also shaped a narrative that touched people’s hearts—the tragedy of pitiful victims. One of the letters from an eyewitness reported: “The sorrowful sight of bodies and the wails and groans of the dying, who were buried under the ruins, is indescribable.” For good reason, “great fear” prevailed in Lisbon because “such a horrible earthquake never took place in any part of the world.”6 The public effect was so enormous that, for example, an article in a Cologne newspaper reported, several months later, that everyone was still talking about what happened in Lisbon, and some people even convinced themselves that they, too, had felt the tremor. The printed word inflamed the consciousness of sensation among readers who were attracted to authentic letters, to precise and detailed reporting, but especially to imaginative and fantastic stories. The eighteenth-century readers were curious about the fate of other people, and their hearts were filled with compassion by descriptions of suffering.7 The destruction of an international commercial city—one of the chief ports of departure for the Atlantic, famous for the import of diamonds from Brazil—the loss of vast amounts of property, and the collapse of the royal palace undermined security on the eve of the outbreak of a new war in Europe. The king of Portugal received letters of condolence from heads of state, and Spain, Holland, and the

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ally, England, sent urgent assistance. Two months after the earthquake, ships sent by George II brought vast amounts of money, food, and equipment: thirty thousand pounds in gold, twenty thousand pounds in silver, and thousands of barrels of preserved meat, butter, rice, and flour, as well as shoes, socks, and hats. The state began restoration projects in Portugal, headed by the industrious working prime minister, the Marquess Sebastião Jose de Carvalho Marquis of Pombal (1699–1782). Under his direction, Lisbon began to be rebuilt from the ruins as a modern, carefully planned city. With his pragmatic spirit and his ambition to effect reforms, which would advance the country to economic power and welfare, Pombal believed that the disaster was natural and that with rational planning, it was possible to minimize the extent of destruction in similar cases. Public order was rapidly restored, epidemics were avoided, and engineers labored on laying out public squares, buildings, and new walls. Pombal ordered that data be collected about the length of the earthquake, the changes in the behavior of animals, and the damage to enable scientists to understand the behavior of nature on the basis of observations and thus to be prepared for further earthquakes.8 The king gave him a free hand, and he exploited his authority for twenty-two years as an enlightened absolute ruler who clung to autocratic rule while adopting the rationalism of the Enlightenment. For the benefit of the state, Pombal did not hesitate to strike at centers of religious power, to attack the Jesuits, and to weaken the Inquisition to a considerable degree. He abolished the differences between New Christians, of Jewish origin, and Old Christians, and he almost completely stopped auto-da-fé ceremonies. The papal legate in Madrid, for example, was instructed to warn the king of Spain that in Portugal, Crypto-Jews (Marranos) and absolute heretics “enjoyed in every way the great favors done for them by the minister.”9 Indeed, after the disaster in Lisbon, no one was executed for Judaizing. Montesquieu’s protest against religious fanaticism seven years earlier in The Spirit of the Laws was heeded in Portugal under Pombal’s rule.10 Many of the public responses to the earthquake did not deviate from religious conventions or the lexicon of faith. On Wednesday, February 18, 1756, the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam observed a day of fasting “to pray to the Lord to save the country from the distress and disasters that afflicted other states and countries aside from it, such as the storm of earthquakes, wars, fires, and the overturning of cities, and to thank Him for salvation from all those upheavals.” The day of prayer was set by “the ministers of state” for all the residents of Holland to give thanks that the damage done to them was not as great as in Portugal and also as a mark of solidarity with the victims of the disaster in other

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places. Saul Ben Arieh Leib (1717–1790), who had just been appointed as rabbi of the Ashkenazi community, succeeding his father, invited the community to sermons on Saturday night and Monday, before the date of the fast. He ordered schoolteachers to recite Psalms with their pupils, and he arranged a service of penitential prayers and petitions for the worshippers in the synagogue. The great fear that had gripped Europe also penetrated the ceremonies in Jewish Amsterdam. One of the penitential prayers read: “Many houses became ruins and chaos, and their residents walked in darkness, every passerby wrung his hands for them, for no hands stayed on them, as in a moment they were overthrown” (cf. Lam. 4:6). The obligation to “pray for the welfare of the city and the entire country” and the feeling of identification with the victims of the disaster were expressed in a plea to God, that He should mitigate His anger: “To ask for mercy from the blessed God, the Lord of praise, to revoke His anger and fury at us, and may He not shock the land from its place with noises and thundering.”11 Theological interpretations of natural disaster were common among both Jews and Christians. Historian Azariah dei Rossi (1511–1578), who was an eyewitness to an earthquake in Ferrara in 1570, believed that “with warnings all caused by nature, the [earthquake] is an instrument of the fury of the Creator of everything.” In this case, even someone like him, who valued the power of science to explain the cause of the earthquake, gave it a supernatural explanation. Such a catastrophe “is close to a miracle and arouses a person to recognize the most divine power and bring it into his heart.”12 More than two hundred years later, Pinh.as Eliyahu Horowitz (1765–1821), a wandering scholar with an appetite for scientific knowledge who was also one of the most apprehensive about the erosion of religion, claimed that the earthquake had taken place in Lisbon as a punishment for its treatment of the Jews. He made a connection between “Lisbon, the capital of the state of Portugal, where… no Jew has the right to dwell, but there are Jews there from before the expulsion, and they are in secret and hiding their faces, and they are called Marranos,” and the intervention of Providence in nature, along biblical lines: “And these days, in the year 5515 [sic, should be 5516], the Lord made a sign to the earth, and it made a great movement, and noise of a commotion and with great thundering . . . and the earth also opened its mouth and swallowed many like the band of Korach, and the earth covered them.”13 John Wesley (1703–1791), a preacher and theologian, the leader of the Methodist movement in England and America, and one of the prominent leaders of the Great Awakening, also had no doubt that in Lisbon God had taken vengeance for the horrors of the Inquisition. He wrote: “It is not surprising, he should begin there, where so much blood has been poured on the ground like

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water! Where so many brave men have been murdered, in the most base and cowardly as well as barbarous manner.” Now the way was open for every Christian to be strong in his faith and submit himself humbly to the power of the Almighty.14 Gabriel Malagrida (1689–1761), the Portuguese Jesuit priest who, paradoxically, was the last person to be burned at the stake at an auto-da-fé in Lisbon about six years after the earthquake, was accused, among other things, of preaching that the disaster was to be seen as punishment for abandoning faith and absence from church for the sake of hedonist life and amusements. Pombal regarded denial of a natural explanation as unacceptable political criticism of the government.15 In the mid-eighteenth century, the religious explanation had to compete with two other ways of interpreting the natural disaster: scientists explained how electric forces or gases contained in the bosom of the earth sought release, burning spontaneously and then bursting out and causing earthquakes; and philosophers pondered man’s fate in the face of blind nature and a distant, indifferent divinity. Partisans of science who refused to deny the supernatural strove to combine faith in Providence with acknowledgment of physical and chemical laws and to moderate that tension slightly. The relatively large communications coverage and international solidarity also made the earthquake into a modern event. Public opinion debated its meaning, and prayer meetings did not satisfy everyone. The feeling of empathy for human suffering heightened the humanistic sensitivity that, in the eighteenth century, accompanied the autonomous consciousness of the individual; scientific and philosophical discourse about the Lisbon disaster created, as Jonathan Israel has shown, a break with traditional discourse and with those who preached religious revival.16 When Voltaire wrote about the Lisbon earthquake on November 24 in a letter to his friend, Jean Robert Tronchin (1710–1793), the banker from Lyons, he set aside his characteristic irony and was absolutely serious, panicked, and moved: “This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters in the best of all possible worlds—where a hundred thousand ants, our neighbours, are crushed in a second on our ant-heaps, half, dying undoubtedly in inexpressible agonies, beneath débris from which it was impossible to extricate them, families all over Europe reduced to beggary, and the fortunes of a hundred merchants—Swiss, like yourself—swallowed up in the ruins of Lisbon. What a game of chance human life is!”17 Voltaire responded to the disaster in Lisbon with shock. In January 1756 in Paris, the first copies of his Poem on the Lisbon Disaster appeared. This powerful work contained a penetrating philosophical polemic against the optimistic philosophy of Leibniz and Pope as well as great

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compassion for the victims of the disaster and for mankind in general, and it is subtitled Or Examination of the Axiom, “Everything Is Good.”: Oh unfortunate mortals! Oh deplorable earth! Oh, a frightful assembly of all the mortals! An eternal discourse of useless sorrows.

How can one explain the horror? How can one understand divine providence? Were the innocent victims sinners who deserved punishment? What crime, what fault did these children commit Crushed and bleeding on the maternal breast?

If they were indeed innocent, then where is justice? Lisbon, which no longer exists, had it more vices Than London, than Paris, plunged in delights: Lisbon is destroyed, and people are dancing in Paris.

Why was God not merciful? This was a gloomy poem describing a threatening world and a vision of torments and doubts regarding the ideal of happiness. Voltaire took care not to cross the threshold of religious skepticism, beyond which was denial of God, but he found it hard to come up with a promise of hope. In the face of the arbitrary forces of nature, man seemed minuscule and lost.18 The letter that Rousseau sent to Voltaire on August 18, 1756, in response to the poem was published widely and revealed rifts in the enlightened elite. Later, in his Confessions, he wrote cynically that he was “struck to see this poor man, burdened, you might say, by prosperity and glory, protest bitterly against all the miseries of this life, and finding that everything is bad.” In his letter to Voltaire, Rousseau reproached him for cruelty, in that he caused his human brethren to despair with such gloomy depictions of their fate, rather than offering them consolation, causing sorrow to his readers. The earthquake in Lisbon did not undermine the enlightened optimistic view of the world, since it could be explained by the laws of nature. People were the ones who had built that crowded city rather than disperse the houses and build low buildings, which would have limited the damage, and divine Providence is universal and does not consider particular events and individuals.19 Many dangers threatened life in the eighteenth century, but the earthquake in Lisbon surprised Europe not only because of its enormity and power but also because some saw in it a contradiction of the optimism of the Enlightenment. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who began to make his mark on literature in the last quarter of the century, was only a child in Frankfurt

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when the earthquake struck, but it left a deep and powerful impression in his memory. The news that arrived was terrifying: clergymen preached repentance, philosophers tried to explain and console, and everyone spoke only about this. As a child, Goethe was affected: “By an extraordinary world event the child’s tranquility was shocked for the first time.” Like others, he, too, absorbed the compassion for suffering, and he was aware of the spread of waves of fear. Doubts gnawed in the child’s heart when people around the six-year-old dared to speak about the cruelty of God. Looking back at what almost seemed like mass hysteria, Goethe explained the root of the surprise: the earthquake “spread enormous fright over a world that had become used to peace and tranquility.”20 Only in an age when hopes for change were rising and only in a culture where humanistic voices who believed in progress and ethical and happy lives were growing stronger could a sudden natural disaster and the encounter with human suffering undermine one’s world view.

Bet w e en Joy a n d Pl e a su r e, th e Bloody Battl efi elds, a n d th e Hu m a nistic Prote st The 1750s was another decade of the flourishing of the Enlightenment and high hopes for the future of mankind. In 1751, Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783) published the first volume of their Encyclopédie in France, “a systematic dictionary of the sciences and arts.” Its editors sought to make a cultural revolution by disseminating knowledge. “The Preliminary Discourse” of the Encyclopédie shaped the consciousness of the modern age. Its underlying narrative told of the spirit released from ignorance, of progress for humanity expected from now on, of the light that was reborn, and of the human race emerging from a time of barbarity and freed of prejudice—a process that began in the Renaissance and came to fruition in the scientific and philosophical revolution.21 Despite the authors’ effort to disguise radical ideas and political and religious criticism, the Encyclopédie aroused the counter-Enlightenment. Censors, clergy, government officials, and other concerned conservatives identified the subversive tendencies.22 Indeed, even an apparently innocent article on happiness, published in the second volume, could contain a revolutionary explosive charge: “All men are one in their desire for happiness. Nature has made happiness a law of our being, and all that is not happiness is alien to our disposition.” Since this was the basic assumption from which a natural right derived, who could restrict the autonomous individual’s freedom of choice? “Does not everyone have the right to be happy according to his whims?”23

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The high culture of Europe continued to speak of the aspiration to happiness in the second half of the century. The article in the Encyclopédie did distinguish between various types of happiness, especially between vulgar sensuous pleasures and the pleasure of a scholar who observes the world, but it conceded that in order to attain happiness, one must experience pleasures.24 Opportunities were not lacking. Europe offered a broad variety of pleasures. At the end of act three of Händel’s oratorio, Theodora, which was performed at Covent Garden in London in 1750, we hear a duet singing “Streams of Pleasure Ever Flowing.”25 The painter François Boucher (1703–1770) brought the rococo style to one of its daring peaks with the nude painting of Louise O’Murphy, a fifteen-year-old blonde Irish girl who was to become one of Louis XV’s mistresses.26 By contrast, in his copper etchings, William Hogarth (1697–1763) continued to depict harsh scenes of poverty that included depictions of drunkenness and violence in the city streets, as in Four Stages of Cruelty, Beer Street, and Gin Lane (1751). He believed that the sight he showed to English society would teach people that the torture of animals and human beings was a repugnant amusement, that alcoholic beverages produced destructive pleasures, and that these diseases of society could be cured by education and correct policy.27 Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798), the Italian adventurer who roamed throughout Europe in search of high society, the courts of kings and princes, money, gambling, fine food, knowledge, and erotic experiences was in his native city, Venice, in the 1750s, and in The Story of My Life, he declared that he was a happy man. Written by a free-spirited libertine, this was one of the most revealing autobiographies of the eighteenth century. In a catalog in The Story of My Life, Casanova wrote a history of the many pleasures he had experienced. In the introduction, he confessed that excitement and desire motivated him, not the intellect, and that “the chief business of my life has always been to indulge my senses; I never knew anything of greater importance.” As an autonomous man, he took responsibility for his life, for everything he did was by choice: “As for myself I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good or of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.” In the mid-1750s in Venice, he seduced a nun, teaching her that the slightest inhibition spoiled the greatest possible pleasure, and he also found himself imprisoned for long months in a dark, partially flooded dungeon near the Duce’s palace. In his jail cell, Casanova felt an earthquake and hoped that the building would collapse and that he would emerge in freedom directly on the Piazza San Marco.28 Rousseau, who confronted Voltaire and denied his pessimistic worldview following the disaster in Lisbon, was also pleased with his life. He broke with

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social conventions and lived with Thérèse Levasseur, whom he claimed was an illiterate laundress, without marrying her. She gave birth to five children, whom he gave up to an orphanage, though he says that in her company, “I tasted the taste of perfect domestic happiness.” Though he felt remorse and doubt, in his Confessions he defended what might seem to be immoral behavior and also revealed that he betrayed his wife, who always remained faithful and devoted to him. In the public sphere, Rousseau gained fame in the 1750s by winning the prize of the Academy of Dijon for his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. This surprising recognition strengthened the philosopher’s self-confidence: “I found nothing greater or more beautiful than to be free and virtuous, above fortune and opinion, and to be sufficient to myself.”29 In this discourse and the one following it, the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau surprised his readers by stating that progress of the sciences and the arts has added nothing to our true happiness. Actually the distance from the natural state, he argued, has caused the corruption of society and all its ailments.30 At that time, a new voice was heard in Berlin, mediating between Rousseau and the French Enlightenment and the German Enlightenment. This was the young Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), only twenty-seven years old and a new citizen of the community of the enlightened in Prussia. In 1756, upon the request of his friend Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), he translated Rousseau’s earth-shaking article. This was not merely a translation; it was also entry into the heart of the dispute about Rousseau’s challenging ideas. Anonymously, as he made his first steps in the public sphere, and in the letter by Lessing that appeared as an afterword, he expressed admiration for Rousseau, though he did not hesitate to disagree with him. In the course of his work, “more than once I wished that the author might have defended something else with his divine, clear language.” As a philosopher who could already be identified with the optimistic school of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), Mendelssohn believed in people’s ability to improve themselves and come nearer to perfection by means of reason and virtues, and he denied Rousseau’s central idea that progress corrupted society. The path to happiness is possible, and it does not depend on retreat to the state of nature. Mendelssohn purposely gave Voltaire the last word in the discourse on inequality by translating his sarcastic letter to Rousseau, which mocked Rousseau’s glorification of the noble savage and his critique of modernity. Voltaire condemned Rousseau’s pessimism: “Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it.”31

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In 1752, when Voltaire wrote his short satire, Micromégas, he was in the court of Friedrich the Great and still believed that there could be a philosopher king in Europe. Somewhat naively, he believed that with rational and ethical arguments, it would even be possible to dissolve the motivation for wars. Like Gulliver, the gigantic tourist from another star discovers man’s nullity and the pointlessness of disputes among nations, and he is astonished when the philosopher from Earth tells him that “at this very moment there are hundred thousand fools of our species who wear hats, slaying hundred thousand fellow creatures who wear turbans, or being massacred by them, and over almost all of Earth such practices have been going on from time immemorial.” The philosopher points out who is responsible: “those armchair barbarians, who from the privacy of their cabinets, and during the process of digestion, command the massacre of a million men, and afterward ordain a solemn thanksgiving to God.”32 Shortly after the publication of this philosophical tale, Voltaire became disappointed with the Prussian king. He discovered that his kingdom was far from the Enlightenment vision of tolerance and left his palace. As the king of France forbade him to live in Paris, he settled in Geneva in an estate called Les Délices (the delights). No wonder Rousseau was offended that a philosopher whose life was so pleasant should be ungrateful and complain about the bitter fate of humanity. In January 1758, a letter from King Friedrich II reached Voltaire from Breslau, in Silesia, a short time after one of the fiercest battles of the Seven Years’ War. “I have barely enough time to write prose, and even less to write in verse to respond to yours,” reported the king of Prussia, who was gradually recovering from the battle of Leuthen, where he had almost been defeated. He thanked Voltaire for the fine and encouraging words he had written to him after only the hand of luck saved him, and he wished him continued life as a happy philosopher, far from the din of war: “Live happily and in tranquility in Geneva; there is nothing more than that in the world; and pray that the hot, heroic fever of Europe may be cured soon, so that the triumvirate is destroyed, and the tyrants of this universe cannot give to the world the chains they are preparing.”33 In 1757, Casanova was in Dunkirk on the French coast, where he had been sent by the foreign minister, François-Joachim de Pierre, cardinal de Bernis (1715–1794), on an espionage mission to the port, which was under English rule. He passed himself off as an expert, having garnered experience in his years with the fleet of the Republic of Venice. Within a few days, he managed to gain the trust of the English officers, and he collected information about the ships and their armaments, which he communicated to Versailles for a handsome fee. In the following year, he was sent to Holland by the French finance

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minister in one of his desperate efforts to obtain funds for the war. His mission was to convert government promissory notes valued at twenty million francs into foreign currencies or bonds that could easily be redeemed, even at a loss. This financial transaction was centered in Amsterdam and The Hague, where, in December 1758, he visited the home of Tuvia Boaz (1696–1782), furnished with a letter of recommendation. Casanova found the wealthy Jewish banker sitting at the table with his family; he later noted that “he said to me jocularly, that it was Christmas eve, and I must rock the cradle of the baby Jesus to put him to sleep. I answered that I had come to his home to celebrate the holiday of the Maccabees [Hanukkah] with him. That answer was greeted by cheers from the whole family, and they invited me to dine with them. I acceded without hesitation.” Boaz not only gave him advice as to how to manage the business, he also praised him for his success in the mission conferred upon him by the French government. Spreading groundless rumors that the war was about to end helped him conclude the business with the bankers at a small loss, with the expectation that the currency would rise in value with the advent of peace.34 The interests of the great powers and the ambitions of the rulers overcame Enlightenment aspirations for peace. Between 1756 and 1763, the war endangered the lives of millions. Like the natural disaster in Lisbon and perhaps more than any preceding war, it also received wide coverage in the press, and many people were able to stay up to date with the news that flowed from the battlefield. The prolonged struggle between England and France for control over North America and its wealth and the political upheaval in international relations that joined Austria and France into an alliance led to the war. It took place simultaneously in several principal arenas in the colonies of North America and in India, the Philippines, and West Africa, as well as in Central Europe, making the Seven Years’ War a transatlantic, global war.35 In Britain, vigorous statesman William Pitt (1708–1778), a member of Parliament, the minister of foreign affairs, and eventually the prime minister, sought to drive France out of maritime commerce and the colonies, and he took control over all of Canada as a prime aim. Victory in this arena would guarantee the economic power of the British Empire. The Diplomatic Revolution, the alliance between England and Prussia to defend British interests on the continent and to obtain a free hand in the struggle against France, and the alliance of Austria, France, and Russia with the aim of concentrating power and subduing Prussia were what shaped the chief forces in the coalitions on the eve of the war. Ambitious leaders, outstanding military commanders, diplomats, and government ministers who saw the success of their country as a personal achievement

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stood behind the strategic goals of the European states. However, central to the conflict, as in the war of the previous decade, was the confrontation between Friedrich II and Maria Theresa. The queen was not reconciled to the loss of Silesia, and the supreme goal of her foreign policy was to overcome that deep humiliation inflicted by Prussia and to restore to Austria the rich territory with a population of over a million. She despised Friedrich. She saw him as a wicked man who threatened the stability of all of Europe, and she believed that her mission was to prevent him from increasing his power. To do this, Maria Theresa depended on influential diplomat Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz (1711–1794), the Austrian ambassador in Paris and afterward prime minister. He devised the political maneuvers that paved the way to the alliance with France and the new bloc, along with Russia, Sweden, and Saxony-Poland, which threatened Prussia and sought to remove it from the circle of European powers.36 Indeed, Friedrich II felt that he was besieged, and for him the war would be an existential challenge. He was contemptuous of Maria Theresa, regarding her as a religious bigot who was petty and vengeful, and he mocked the France of Louis XV (1710–1774), which, in his opinion, was ruled by the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), who had risen from the gutter to greatness in Versailles—she was the daughter of a fishmonger. Friedrich also dismissed the czarina of Russia, Yelisaveta Petrovna (1709–1762), as a whore and a drunkard. In a letter to his sister on the eve of the war, he wrote, “I am in the position of a traveler who finds himself surrounded by gangs of swindlers, who plan to murder me and divide the booty among themselves.”37 The death of Yelisaveta (January 15, 1762) first brought Peter III to the Russian throne, but within a few months, after a palace revolution and his assassination, his wife, Yekaterina II (Katherine the Great, 1729–1796), formerly a German princess and the daughter of a Prussian general, the governor of the city of Stettin, took power. Russian immediately reversed its policy, ending the war against Prussia, reaching a peace treaty, and supporting France. Prussia was rescued from impending defeat, and Austria lost its chance to regain Silesia. On the colonial front, a clear victory for England was achieved in 1759. London was euphoric, and patriotism swelled. At Christmas, the public learned a new song in honor of this “wonderful year” and the hero of the British navy. The words were written by a veteran and popular actor, the director of the Royal Theater, Drury Lane, David Garrick (1717–1779): “To honor we call you, not press you like slaves, / For who are so free as the sons of the waves?”38 The war ended with the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in the Saxon fort of Hubertusburg (February 2, 1763). The British Empire was fortified in North America, France was weakened by land and by sea, and the situation in Europe

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reverted to its former state, with Austria and Prussia maintaining a balance of power. Despite the struggles and the many victims, no borders were changed. The seven years of the war had been destructive. About a million soldiers were killed, and almost all the countries involved in it were on the verge of bankruptcy because of the enormous expenses demanded for equipment and for feeding hundreds of thousands of soldiers and paying their salaries.39 A radical critique of the war appeared in Geneva in 1759, garbed in Voltaire’s philosophical novella, Candide, a dark and bitter satire that perhaps more than any other text challenged the enlightened culture of Europe of the mid-eighteenth century. Candide gave powerful expression to the humanist sentiment. Under the effect of the earthquake in Lisbon and the Seven Years’ War, from the vantage point of his chateau in Ferney, on the border between France and Switzerland, Voltaire observed what he saw as a record of injustice and moral degradation, leading to a reckoning with the optimistic philosophy, which, in his opinion, was so far from human experience that one could only treat it with ridicule. The adventures that brought the pure-hearted Candide to various corners of the earth, where he encountered, among other things, a cunning agent of the Inquisition, kings who had lost their crown, a swindling Dutch merchant, a lustful Venetian monk, women who had been raped, survivors of the plague, a Black slave with his arm and leg cut off in a sugar plantation in Surinam, and prostitutes who sold their bodies, fly in the face of his teacher, the philosopher Pangloss, a stand-in for Leibniz, and contradict his belief in the best of all possible worlds.40 Candide’s journey begins with the experience of soldiers at the front and a view of the Seven Years’ War not from the position of a general or a king, but from the battlefield itself. Voltaire was two-faced. While he was corresponding with Friedrich II and flattering him for his achievements, in Candide he showed how greatly he was revolted by war and how strict and cruel the army of the king of Prussia was. Candide was caught in one of the battles that took place in 1757 and 1758 between Prussia and France. He was a simple, frightened soldier who had been conscripted against his will and dressed in the blue uniform of the Prussian army. In splendid array, the soldiers marched into battle: “Nothing was so beautiful, so lively, so brilliant, so well ordered as the two armies. The trumpets, the fifes, the oboes, the drums, the cannons formed a harmony such as there never was in hell.” No reasonable person with a human soul could even come near to thinking there was purpose or significance in what was happening on the battlefield, and Voltaire could only describe with sarcasm the full, cruel nakedness of war and count its victims: “First the cannons knocked over about six thousand men on each side; then the musketry removed from the best of worlds about nine to ten thousand rogues who infected its surface.

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Bayonets were also the sufficient reason for the death of a few thousand men. All together it could have come to about thirty thousand souls.” This was a humanistic protest that penetrated the soul. The violence committed against the civilian population did not escape the soldier’s eye, and everything was done, he commented, “according to public law.” The armies destroyed whole villages and spared no one: “Here old men shot full of holes watched their wives died with their throats cut, while they held their babies to their bleeding breasts; over there lay young girls in their last agonies, disemboweled after satisfying the natural needs of a few heroes; others, half burned, cried out for someone to finish putting them to death. Brains were spattered on the earth alongside severed arms and legs.” During the war, “a million assassins in regiments, running from one end of Europe to the other, practice murder and robbery with discipline to earn their bread, because there is no profession more honest.” It is hard to believe that people are good by nature, and even if they were not born as wolves, they definitely become beasts of prey.41 With regard to Voltaire’s complex attitude toward the Jews, which is full of inner contradictions, in the human universe of Candide, they are both victims deserving of compassion and despicable people. When Cunégonde, Candid’s beloved, tells him about her tribulations in Portugal, she describes how she was sexually exploited by “a Jew named don Issacar, who did business in Holland and Portugal, and who loved women passionately.” He shared her body with a corrupt and cruel Catholic inquisitor. Issacar insults her as a “Galilean bitch,” as he was “the angriest Hebrew anyone ever saw among the Jews since the Babylonian captivity.” Therefore, Candide justifiably runs him through with his sword and also kills the priest, the representative of religious fanaticism, immediately afterward. In the same breath, Cunégonde tells how horrified she was by the auto-da-fé that took place. As Voltaire put it: “After the earthquake that destroyed three-quarters of Lisbon, the wise men of the country found no more efficacious means to avoid total destruction than to give the people a fine auto-da-fé; it was decided by the university of Coïmbre that the spectacle of a few people burned over a low fire, with great ceremony, was an infallible secret to prevent the earth from trembling. Two people were also condemned for Judaizing [‘Two Portuguese who ate a chicken after removing the pork fat’].” According to Cunégonde, who watched the ceremony in pain, the purpose was to intimidate the Jews: “This spectacle redoubled all the feelings which overwhelmed and devoured me. I screamed out, and would have said, ‘Stop, barbarians!’ but my voice failed me”42 Candide was the Enlightenment’s cry of protest, and, despite Voltaire’s hostile prejudice, the attitude toward the Jews was also a touchstone for Europe in his eyes.

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Voltaire sent his characters to Paris just when they were arresting foreigners there, because a beggar from Arras, in northern France, heard someone speaking nonsense and decided that was a good enough reason for patricide. In the first months of the war, with no direct connection with it, the enlightened people of France and outside it were shocked by the cruel execution of Robert-François Damiens (1715–1757), a servant in the palace of Versailles who, for motives that were not entirely clear, tried to assassinate Louis XV with a knife (January 5, 1757), and they raised their voice to stop the torture. The man accused of murdering “the father” was sentenced to a particularly horrifying public punishment of having molten lead, wax, and sulfur poured on him and being dismembered while still alive. The press reported that his extreme torments caused him to emit horrible screams. Casanova, who witnessed the execution in Paris on March 28 in the company of one of his mistresses, turned his face away in revulsion and blocked his ears when the condemned man was attached to four horses, his limbs were torn asunder, and the crowd heard the sound of his breaking bones. He commented that such horrible spectacles were an insult to common humanity. Rousseau, who was not in Paris at the time, wrote, “How I thanked heaven for keeping me away from these spectacles of horrors and crimes, which would have only nourished and embittered the bilious humor that the sight of these public disorders had given me.” By means of Candide, Voltaire responded similarly: “Ah, the monsters!” Candide shouted. “What! Such horrors among a people who dance and sing! Can’t I leave this country as quickly as possible.”43 Two years earlier, in one of his first philosophical works, Mendelssohn held a mirror up before the face of Europe and explained how tragedies in the theater, cruel amusements, and executions were an exciting mixture of fear and compassion from which one derives pleasure: “A display scaffolding soaked in blood for the insensitive masses.” In one of his early humanistic protests, he concludes On Sentiments (1755) with a description of the theater of death: “Look at the crowd that in thick heaps swarms around someone condemned to die. They have all understood what things the scoundrel has perpetrated; they abhor his conduct and maybe even the man himself. Now he is dragged, disfigured and powerless, to the gruesome scaffold. People work their way through the throng, they stand on their tiptoes. They climb roofs in order to see the features of death distort his face.”44

“Se v er a l Cou ntr i e s W er e De stroy ed a n d L a i d Wa ste”: Je ws in th e Se v en Y e a r s’ Wa r Like all the citizens of the Republic of Letters in Europe, Mendelssohn also read Candide and even enjoyed it. He admired Voltaire’s ability to makes his readers

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smile with stories of convoluted adventures, especially with the grotesque figure of Pangloss, and he ignored the portrayal of the Jews in this philosophical fable. However, he did not conceal his reservations about his gloomy, pessimistic outlook. Reality is never as bleak as Voltaire painted it, the critique in Candide does not undermine optimistic philosophy, and besides, what is the message of such a discouraging work? Voltaire found hell where God planted the Garden of Eden, and things about which one might laugh can still be true.45 Perhaps he also found it hard to accept Voltaire because during the Seven Years’ War, Mendelssohn’s humanism conflicted with his Prussian patriotism. Like other Jews, he experienced the years between 1756 and 1763 in several different dimensions. From the viewpoint of the Jewish minority in Europe, the war offered opportunities for several successful economic entrepreneurs to make profits, but it caused suffering to those whose houses were on the battlefields. The community leaders, rabbis, and a philosopher like Mendelssohn struggled with the modern tension between demonstrating loyalty to the state and its rulers on the one hand and yearning for peace on the other. All the countries that took part in the war faced similar financial crises after such great expenses, especially involving weekly wages for the soldiers and the flow of supplies to the army, mainly by means of food wagons. Private merchants and entrepreneurs played a central role in the logistics of the war. For example, a group of Jewish merchants from London signed a contract for military supplies to the English army. On November 27, 1757, David Mendes da Costa reported from the headquarters of the coalition army in Stade, western Germany, to his partner, Abraham Prado, in London: “The army has already marched, and we are encamped in the region of Buxtehude, Harburg. Prince Ferdinand went to Buxtehude today, and the commander is remaining here until all the remaining horses are supplied, to march with a full complement, as the orders require.” He himself was about to go to Hamburg to raise more money in hopes that they could meet their obligations under the contract. This was one of the critical moments in the campaign waged by the English-German army in Hanover. Under the command of the Prussian general Ferdinand of BrunswickLüneburg, a successful counterattack, lasting through the winter months, drove back the French army already occupying parts of Hanover, which was ruled by the English king, George II. Da Costa, who was responsible for the supply of horses, continued to accompany the army and to help with further contracts. In 1758, he followed further campaigns in Germany closely from the English headquarters in Münster. In London, Samson Gideon (1699–1762), the wealthy Jew who was an expert in the financial markets and had been involved in the War of the Austrian Succession, stood out once again. He obtained loans for the government—enormous sums of millions of pounds—and he served as an

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intermediary between the government and the Bank of England to prevent a credit crisis, which threatened to bring down the entire financial system and interfere with the ability to pay for the war. In return for his assistance to the king and the state, Gideon hoped to fulfill his dream and to complete the process of separation from the Jewish community and integrate into the English aristocracy, and he requested a noble title. He received a disappointing answer from the king. Although he was married to a Christian woman and their three children had been baptized, at this moment of instability, such a step was inappropriate. The king made a counteroffer, which at least assured the future of the family: a much-desired title for his children, assuring their social ascent. In 1759, Gideon could announce with joy to his thirteen-year-old son, who was already enrolled in the prestigious Eton College, that his lifetime aspiration had been fulfilled: the king had granted him the title of baron, which, although it was the lowest inheritable noble title, was a first step, and Gideon hoped that his son would rise higher.46 England’s ally, Prussia, also signed contracts with Jewish entrepreneurs. There, however, the enormous profits they reaped during the war did not serve as a ticket of entry into high society. Rather, it served to reinforce the power and influence in the community and to form a Jewish aristocracy. The desire to base the economy on firm mercantile foundations and to encourage local industry led Friedrich II to support the many concessions and privileges that had been granted to the talented and industrious David Hirsch in the 1730s to establish and expand the velvet and silk factories in Potsdam and compete with the textiles and clothing accessories that were then manufactured mainly in France. Beginning in midcentury, other “velvet Jews” entered this industry, including Moses Riess and Isaac Bernhard.47 Even before the war, the king had leased all the mints to Jews from the family of Itzig Gumpertz. After the occupation of Saxony and the mints in Leipzig and Dresden, they were taken over by the company of Veitel Heine Ephraim (1703–1775) and his sons and his partner, Daniel Itzig (1723–1799), who retained contracts to supply coins to the kingdom of Prussia from 1758 to the end of the war. The task of the Münz-Entrepreneurs was to acquire silver and gold throughout Europe to melt it down and mint new coins. The king and his government adopted a monetary policy of intentional drastic devaluation by reducing the amount of precious metal in the coins and by minting more coins than the metal was actually worth. Suspicion was great, complaints abounded, and there was a lack of confidence in the coinage of Prussia, Saxony, and Poland; the low value aroused fury that was directed at “the Jewish money” and the bad coins of Ephraim. At a certain stage, the Jewish entrepreneurs sought to dissolve the contract, but the king regarded their role

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in devaluing the coinage and providing millions of thalers to the state treasury as vital to prevent defeat in the war.48 The risk was great, but the profit—usually 8 percent of the value of the precious metals that were supplied—made the families of these merchants in Berlin the richest in the community. Their economic status was not only translated into privileges from the state, which went far beyond Friedrich II’s restrictive legislation, including free rights of movement, the possibility of building splendid houses in the center of the city, and in 1761, even making them equal to Christian merchants, but also into unprecedented closeness, approaching identification, of a group of Jews to the state. Thus, for example, at the height of the war and the effort to produce coins, Ephraim and Itzig saw fit to address the authorities with an unprecedented proposal to establish a modern Jewish school, justifying it, among other things, with a philanthropic and patriotic purpose: “With the desire to make the Jews more useful to the state we have been aroused to establish an institution for poor Jewish boys.” Another seventeen years passed before such a school was established in Berlin (Jüdische Freischule, 1778), which was to be the pioneer in the modernization of Jewish education in Europe. However, the proposal shows the intention of the wealthy entrepreneurs to invest their money to effect a change for the benefit of the community and their belief that these changes would simultaneously benefit the state, because they would contribute to the integration of the Jews. The dual curriculum, Jewish and German, would be the point of departure: “Poor boys will learn, aside from Hebrew studies, reading and writing [in German] as well, arithmetic, languages, and sciences, from German instructors.”49 No open criticism was voiced within Jewish society, but Mendelssohn did not conceal his view from his friends that the intentional devaluation by means of the leaseholders of the mints was an immoral trick. Friedrich Nicolai wrote: “Moses did not have a favorable opinion of the mint entrepreneur Veitel, that is, Ephraim, who became so famous during the Seven Years War. . . . Moses was revolted by this project, because he thought it was illicit, and he wanted no part in it, not even indirectly, despite the tempting offers he received from Ephraim.”50 This indirect quotation offers a glimpse into the dilemmas that perturbed the Jewish philosopher during the war. For example, would he have judged with such severity even an anonymous Jew from the margins of the society who helped the Prussian war effort in his own way? The municipal archives of Breslau preserve the appeal of Simon Marcus to Friedrich II asking for special privileges because of his service as an excellent Prussian spy. In his letter to the king, he wrote, “Your royal highness, you probably remember, that I, Simon Marcus, a Jew from Moravia, served you faithfully and loyally in the

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time of the past war, with great and secret deeds, while risking my life and my soul at all times and in every hour.” Marcus was sent to Bohemia and Saxony by the commanders of the army from Breslau to spy on the armies of Russia and Austria. “I brought important information from there,” he wrote. After the war was over, he could not return to his home, which was in the Austrian territory of Silesia, because, in fact, he had betrayed the state. Hence, he had fled to Potsdam and asked to settle there or in Berlin. The king himself signed the order giving Marcus, as a prize for his good services, permission to live in Berlin and a license to deal in livestock.51 Unlike Marcus, the leaders of the various Jewish communities were scrupulous during the war to display total loyalty to their countries, and prayers for the success of the rulers and military officers were divided on either side of the front—and, in effect, opposed each other. While in Prussia and England, the Jews helped the army and the government. Rabbi Ezekiel Landau did everything he could to demonstrate the Jews’ devotion to Maria Theresa, making sure that this time not even the slightest suspicion should arise—a lesson from previous wars and the expulsion from Prague. On September 5, just six days after the Prussian invasion of Saxony, a special prayer, written by Landau, was recited in the synagogues of Prague for the success of the queen, her husband, and her family, as well as of the ministers of the government and the officers of the Austrian army. From then until the end of the war, this prayer, which called upon God to frustrate the plans of the enemy with evil intentions for “the people of our country,” was recited daily in all the synagogues of the city after morning and evening prayers. Marcus was apparently not the only Jewish spy. Seeing the risk to the community if a Jew were discovered in the service of the enemy, on December 22, 1756, Landau and the lay leaders of Prague proclaimed the excommunication of all spies who might cause damage to the state and harm to the queen. In a poster in which the writ of excommunication was published, as it was recited in the Altneuschul in a ceremony accompanied by “taking the Torah scroll out of the Holy Ark, to the sounding of the shofar, and extinguishing all the candles,” the rabbi of the community once more pledged loyalty to Maria Theresa. It was the holy duty of every man and woman to give their lives for the royal family.52 In early May 1757, the loyalty of the Jews was tested when the Prussian forces, under the command of the king, drove deep into Bohemia, and the war reached the gates of Prague. For more than a month, once again the city was under siege and bombarded by cannons, while outside its walls, battles between the armies of Austria and Prussia took place. Unlike Voltaire, who imagined the war in Candide from his distant chateau, the Jews of Prague experienced it in

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the flesh, and one of the witnesses recorded the events in a special megilah (a chronicle) as miraculous events and a story of rescue and redemption. The Hebrew chronicle reported the course of the war almost on a daily basis. It also conveyed the sounds and sights from the viewpoint of the citizens, opening a window to the feelings of dread and existential worry. On Saturday, May 6, about fifty thousand defeated Austrian soldiers fled to Prague, including a column of hundreds of wounded men who marched through the streets of the Jews. The megilah tells about the help offered by the Jews: “Since they are children of the merciful and charitable One, they succored the army of the damaged and gave brandy and whiskey and coffee and money and wine to those bitter souls.” Within a short time, that charity became an obligation imposed on the community by order of the supreme Austrian military commander, and to it were added many other tasks. Jewish medics were required to treat the wounded, others were ordered to bear them to hospitals on their shoulders and to cook food for them. Meanwhile, the Prussian army tightened the siege, and Prague was shelled by day and night. The civilian population was required to give all its resources to the army. The lay leaders of the community, Israel Fränckel and Isaac Segal, were required to show loyalty to Maria Theresa by paying large sums of money, to be used as the soldiers’ salaries. When there appeared to be danger of famine, everyone was required to surrender their food supplies to special storehouses, where the food was sold for money, under supervision, according to the number of family members. Five hundred Jews were conscripted daily to work on the fortifications, handle supplies, and put out fires. Rabbi Landau ruled that in this time of emergency, they were to obey instructions, even at the cost of violating the Sabbath, and he called for a public fast and the recital of penitential prayers. The Jews and the Austrian officers understood very well that any negligence in following instructions would be interpreted as disloyalty. From past experience, it was feared that the many soldiers who were in distress would loot the Jewish homes, and the leaders of the community sought protection from the officers to prevent plünderung (plundering), which had already begun.53 In addition, people feared for their lives as artillery shells fell unpredictably, with terrifying sounds of explosion, destroying buildings and starting fires. Beginning on the night of May 30, the bombardment of the city grew more intense. Roofs were damaged, windows were broken, upper stories collapsed, and many people crowded into the ground floors in rooms that were thought to be relatively secure. The damage was heavy, but while the Christian population suffered hundreds of deaths, the megilah thanks God for His protection and salvation. About a month and a half after the beginning of the siege, the

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Prussian army was defeated in the battle of Kolin and retreated from all of Bohemia: “The men of the army of her Highness the queen struck their enemies a mighty blow such that the army of the Prussian nation turned its back on the army of her Highness the queen and fled before it.”54 Rabbi Landau gathered his congregation in the Altneuschul for a prayer of thanksgiving for the Austrian victory and elimination of the threat to the Jews of Prague. When Maria Theresa visited there, Rabbi Landau took part in the reception and blessed the queen for her victory, and a troupe of Jewish girls appeared, impressing her with their dancing. More than twenty years later, when the rabbi of Prague composed a eulogy sermon for the queen, he recalled the siege to prove beyond all doubt the Austrian patriotism of the Jews and their loyalty to the Habsburgs: “Just as all of us did in the days of the siege in the year 5517 [1757], I too, with all my strength, worked then and truly risked my life in great dangers, as was well known at that time, and everything was from love.”55 Voltaire pointed out the unbearable irony between the bloodshed and horrors of war and the dependence of all the enemies on the mercy and support of God, as well as about the conclusion of the military campaign upon the order of the kings by “praising God with a hymn of Te Deum.”56 During the Seven Years’ War, it was expected for the first time that the Jews in Austria, England, and Prussia should take part in the special commemorative days to celebrate achievements on the battlefield with prayers of thanksgiving and petitions for the mercy of heaven to save the country. This time more was demanded than merely reciting blessings for the rulers. Special ceremonies in the synagogues were required on the days declared by the government for all the residents. Before laws and regulations were passed with the aim of advancing civil equality and rescinding restrictions, this was one of the significant expressions of recognition of the Jewish minority as sharing the general fate and identification with the state. In the Great Synagogue of the Ashkenazi community in London, Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Levin (1721–1800), Jacob Emden’s nephew, gave a series of sermons during the war that were decidedly Jewish Te Deum sermons presenting the victorious king as the emissary of God, doing His deeds. Like the rabbi of Prague, Levin also demonstrated Jewish loyalty. The duty of the Jews was to acknowledge the king’s favor for giving them protection, and, since the Jews were not fit to take part in the war itself in the ranks of the army, their task was to pray for his victory. Almost echoing the conversation in Voltaire’s Candide, Levin described the war to his congregation as a horrible catastrophe whose consequences were destruction and death, but he argued that what appeared to be hopeless was in fact worthy, just, and inevitable. Though it might appear that

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kings sometimes went to war for pointless reasons, it was best to trust that the king understood the interests of the state better than anyone else. War was justified because the king sought, at the cost of shedding blood, to save his people from disasters that the enemy might visit upon them. “Behold, several thousands died in the greatest wars of this time,” the preacher mourned. “Some of them were killed, some of them drowned in the sea, and several countries were destroyed and laid waste, and completely swept away by terrors!” (cf. Ps. 73:19). Now they were to rejoice in the downfall of the enemy, and in the thanksgiving ceremonies, sensitivity toward their losses was expected. In general, peace was preferable to war, and one should also pray for this, but in the end, the outcome was the will of divine providence.57 According to Rabbi Levin’s sermon, victory bore witness to the support of heaven and the justice of England’s path in the eyes of God. However, the crisis of the war also served him as an occasion for disapproval directed inward. In his view, it was an occasion not only for prayer but also for repentance and struggle against the evil impulse. Disasters and wars were often punishment for religious permissiveness, such as that which had begun to spread among the Jews of London—the shaving of beards, violation of the Sabbath, extramarital sexual relations, and disrespect for the prohibitions of menstruation. In one of his patriotic sermons, he even connected the sin of men who sleep with their wives before they purify themselves in the ritual bath after menstruation and retribution in the form of the drowning of twelve Jews in the rough water in the port of Portsmouth, the great port of the English fleet, which served the warships. A small community of industrious Jewish merchants had formed there and earned their livelihood by catering to the sailors. On Friday, February 10, 1758, in the afternoon, a boat carrying Jewish peddlers on their way back from the battleship Lancaster capsized, and only one of them was saved. This event left a lasting impression in the community’s memory and indirectly testified to yet another way in which the Jews were involved in the Seven Years’ War.58 The age of nationalism had not yet come to Europe. An army of the people would not be conscripted until the French Revolution, and sovereignty remained in the hands of the kings as a symbol and source of authority. However, the states conscripted all their subjects during the Seven Years’ War, including the members of the Jewish minority, to express formal thanksgiving and feelings of solidarity in prayers in the central cities. In those very days, when Jews were praying for the success of Maria Theresa’s army in the synagogues in Prague, similar prayers were also offered in the communities of Berlin, where they prayed that the enemy might not reach their gates, implored God to strengthen the hand of King Friedrich and his army, and asked for the defeat

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of the ruler in Vienna.59 At the same time as Rabbi Landau ordered the community to assist the war effort by reciting Psalms and special prayers, Rabbi David Fränkel (1704–1762) commissioned hymns and prayers for the Berlin community and had them printed in a pamphlet in Hebrew and German: “When our lord the wise king Friedrich II set out with his army in the end of 5516, it was established here in Berlin to recite Psalms 25, 46, 61, 62, 72 every day in the synagogue in public after the aleinu prayer, and then the prayer leader must recite this prayer.”60 In contrast, the communities in France expressed their loyalty to King Louis XV in their prayers, wishing for his success. Thus, for example, Rabbi Jacob de Lunel was shocked by the attempt on the king’s life by Damiens in early 1757, and in a ceremony in thanksgiving for his survival, he marveled that “that man of many wicked deeds and crimes . . . the evil of his heart drove him to plunge it into the pure body of the king’s head.” The community of Lunéville raised its arms to God and prayed for Louis XV’s victory over his enemies: “Inspector of every thought, who dwells in heaven, send weakness to enemy . . . thwart their cunning plots, and add days to the life of the king, and may his kingdom overcome all who rise against it.”61 In the circumstances of the war, then, the Jewish communities found themselves arrayed behind the borders of the states in conflict and combat on the battlefield. Opposing and contradictory prayers for the success of Maria Theresa and Louis XV and for the success of their sworn enemy, Friedrich II, appeared to compete with each other. For example, Rabbi Landau, the Austrian rabbi, was concerned for his royal family, whereas Rabbi Levin was “British” and Rabbi Fränkel was “Prussian,” and their task was to lead the Jews in constant demonstrations of support for the victory of the soldiers in blue uniforms. Did the demand to display patriotism make the seeds of divisiveness penetrate the Jewish communities of Europe and paint them with the colors of their countries? At least the emotional language and the declarations voiced in speeches, hymns of praise, and ceremonies could be seen as the beginning of this process, as the expectation for the success of “our Prussian citizens,” for example, opposed Austrian-Jewish solidarity with “the people of the states, both the non-Jews and the Jews.” The greatest effort to demonstrate loyalty to a country during the war was apparently made by the Berlin community. On Thursday, November 10, 1757, five days after the Prussian victory in Rosbach, a day of fasting and repentance was declared, and at evening prayers, Rabbi Fränkel gave a sermon and called for contributions to the orphans and widows of the soldiers who had given their lives to their king and their country. During the Sabbath prayers two days later, the members of the community assembled for a formal ceremony of thanksgiving,

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and a special prayer was recited, which had been written by the rabbi. A week later, all of Berlin was awash with patriotic sentiments after the victory at Leuthen, which allayed grave apprehension that Prussia might collapse before her enemies. On the second night of Hanukkah (December 8), the Jews also took part in the reception for the king and his army, and on Saturday (December 10), a day of thanksgiving was proclaimed, which was also observed in the synagogue. Immediately after the reading of the Torah, the rabbi delivered a sermon of thanksgiving, which moved the congregation. “Then the cantor sang, while holding the Torah, the customary prayer for success and the welfare of the kingdom, first giving praise to the monarchs, and after it he sang the song that was newly composed for this miracle with happiness and joy, and all the people heard and rejoiced and answered out loud, amen, amen, long live our lord the king!”62 This was neither an ordinary ceremony nor a traditional sermon. Rather, it was a milestone in the integration of the Jews of Europe in the culture of the country. Rabbi Fränkel was not only the spokesman of the Berlin community, he also composed most of the sermons and special hymns, but helpers stood at his side who were mainly involved as translators into German—two of the enlightened scholars of the community, Hertog Leo (Zwi Hirsch Lifschitz) and Mendelssohn. The Leuthen sermon was translated by Mendelssohn, and it might have been written in collaboration between him and the rabbi. Its decidedly humanistic ideas bore the seal of his worldview. The sermon expressed the feeling of dread that preceded the victory, and it regarded what had happened in Leuthen as a palpable miracle testifying to divine providence that favored Frederick and his army and miraculously saved them from disaster. However, more than anything, it expressed loyalty and a feeling of belonging precisely at the historical moment when the earliest seeds of national consciousness were sown in Prussia. “Oh! If only we could raise our voice so that all of Europe might see or hear these marvelous events,” Rabbi Fränkel called out in his sermon. He spoke about devotion to the homeland and about “our fellow citizens” (unserer Mitbürger), and he mentioned once again the duty to assist the relatives of the brave soldiers who had given their lives for a just cause. Like Rabbi Levin in London, he also warned his listeners not to rejoice at the fall of the enemy, for “we are all children of the single living God.” The king kills his enemy because he has no alternative, but in the end, war is massacre, “and it is a shame to the human race [that rivers of blood] continue to flow.” Attributing the victory to God as a deity of mercy and universal justice and even the great yearning for perpetual peace expressed in the prayers in the synagogue did not overshadow Prussian pride: “Are you surprised now that all Europe must feel admiration for the wisdom and power of our king and the courage of our countrymen?”63

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The Leuthen sermon reverberated far beyond the walls of the synagogue. The German translation was published in a special pamphlet printed in several editions, including English translations in London, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The sermon by Fränkel and Mendelssohn became a text that represented Jewish Berlin. The declaration of loyalty to the state was greeted with surprise and admiration. In the Philadelphia edition, the publisher declared in his “preface to the Christian reader”: No nation under heaven has been more severely treated, or more universally persecuted than this poor unhappy People: Their Prejudices against our Lord Jesus Christ, as the promised MESSIAH, have given too just Grounds to Christians to be displeased with their hard Speeches and evil Conduct, but can be no Warrant to rob, or oppress, or to persecute and destroy them. . . . Why should [Christians] not shew them the same Love and Tenderness in a civil Capacity? From this little Performance it is evident that they have Patriot Sentiments, and the warmest Gratitude to Princes who have Wisdom and Humanity to protect and defend them.64

Mendelssohn followed the events of the Seven Years’ War with especially great tension, since along with the fate of Prussia, his personal life was also bound up with it. During the late stages of the war, Mendelssohn and his betrothed anxiously waited until they would be able to marry. After they became engaged in Hamburg, where Fromet Guggenheim (1737–1812) lived, Mendelssohn returned to Berlin in the spring of 1761 to prepare their home and to obtain a residence permit for Fromet. For a full year, they didn’t see each other, and they kept their connection alive with dozens of letters; in these, he expressed his longing and affection, as well as his worry and frustration because of his dependence on government officials, on the king’s good will, on the mint Jews, who intervened on his behalf, and on the course of the war. These letters show that his Prussian identity concerned him quite a bit, beyond the sermons and hymns of praise he was involved in composing and translating in the public sphere. Mendelssohn included a gift for his fiancée in one of the letters: a pair of earrings and a medallion that was minted in honor of a Prussian victory over the Austrian army in the battle of Liegnitz (August 17, 1760). This was one of the medallions coined for the king by the Jewish artist Jakob Abraham (1723–1800) to honor Prussia’s achievements in the war. Friedrich’s image was not missing on that medallion, but Mendelssohn contributed the ideas for its design and the Latin inscription on it. “Perhaps the battles don’t interest you very much,” he wrote to his beloved Fromet, “but in a little while [when you are a Prussian subject], you will take part [in rejoicing] for the king’s victories, and you won’t

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be able to remain indifferent to the medallion, since I was the one who designed it.” Even when he disguised it under an ironic veil (“You see! I think of myself as such an important man”), Mendelssohn found it hard to conceal his pride and his willingness to cooperate in glorifying Prussia’s victories.65 The letters from the autumn and winter of 1761 allude to the panic that was spreading in Berlin because of the danger of a Russian invasion. The enemy was approaching the city, and some people had fled, but in his opinion, the reality was less frightening than the mood. By the beginning of 1762, everything had completely changed from top to bottom, and the worries disappeared. On January 26, Mendelssohn wrote to “dear Fromet” that the rumors about events in Russia were very favorable. The death of the czarina and the change in regime took Russia out of the war, and suddenly the pressure on Prussia was removed. For the king and for Mendelssohn, this news meant salvation. On March 26, Guggenheim’s residence permit was approved, and she received word, once more in an ironic tone that combined reservations and joy: “Now you are a resident of Prussia and must support the Prussian side. As a good Prussian woman, you must think only of what is to our benefit.” Two months later, there was celebration in Berlin, as Mendelssohn reported on May 25, with yet another burst of patriotism: “Yesterday the peace treaty with Russia was published. . . . Long live Peter III and Friedrich! Next Sunday, may it be a good day for us, they will chant a Te Deum.”66 The Mendelssohn couple could add a personal Te Deum of their own, because now the path to their marriage was open. The changes in international relations and especially the peace treaty with Russia made it possible for them to begin life together. The dilemma of patriotism was not simple. When the war approached the gates of Berlin and the danger was palpable, Mendelssohn could wax enthusiastic, for example, about an essay entitled “To Die for the Homeland” by his friend Thomas Abbt (1738–1766), a professor at the university of Frankfurt on the Oder. He, too, wished to share national consciousness with Friedrich’s subjects, but in the end, to whom should someone with no country give allegiance? After the war, he shared his doubts about his identity with Abbt: “Who are the people of my country, the residents of Dessau [where he was born] or those of Jerusalem?”67 Perhaps these vacillations in his mood were influenced by the necessity of humbling himself before the king whom he had just praised. In a letter to Friedrich II, Mendelssohn asked for his approval of a permanent residence permit. The king, who had saved Prussia and thrilled Mendelssohn’s heart with his deeds in war, was also the one who had signed the General Privilege, which imposed close supervision, restrictions, and conditions on the very presence of Jews in the kingdom of Prussia. I am legally a foreigner

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(ausländer), he said, but perhaps the efforts I made in the field of science might stand in my favor.68 This tension between consciousness of being foreign and identification with “our citizens” would henceforth be the basic and foundational experience of the Jews of Germany. Mendelssohn revealed his true opinion of the war in a letter to Lessing in its early stages. Lessing had complained that, because of the war, he only wanted to flee and block his ears so as not to hear the sounds of suffering, and Mendelssohn implored him: “Come to us! In an isolated cabin in the garden, we can forget that the human instincts are destroying the world. How easy it would be for us to forget the dishonorable squabbles of greed, while we continue our oral discussions about more important matters.” In Candide Voltaire had advocated cultivating one’s garden as a refuge from the horrors of the world. Mendelssohn offered Lessing shelter from the tumult of the war, which repelled him so much, by suggesting a withdrawal to the garden of the philosopher’s home.69

Note s 1. See Heinrich Graetz, “Ezechiel Landau’s Gesuch an Maria Theresia gegen Jonathan Eibescütz,” Montatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 26 (1877): 22. 2. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, paragraphs 27, 28. See also Jirina Sedinova, “The Hebrew Historiogrpahy in Moravia at the 18th Century: Abraham Trebitsch (around 1760–1840),” Judaica Bohemiae 10 (1974): 51–61. 3. This eyewitness testimony is found in Eva March Tappan, ed., The World’s Story: A History of the World in Story, Song and Art, vol. 5 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914–1918), 618–628. 4. T. D. Kendrick, The Lisbon Earthquake (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1955); Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 39–55; Russel Dynes, “The Lisbon Earthquake in 1755: The First Modern Disaster,” in The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Representations and Reactions, ed. Theodore Braun and John Radner (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2005), 34–49. 5. Louis chevalier de Jaucourt, “Lisbon,” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, trans. Jack Iverson (Ann Arbor: Michigan Publication, University of Michigan Library, 2005). 6. For more on the report on the earthquake from November and December 1755, see Dirk Friedrich, ed., Erdbeben von Lissabon 1755, Quellen und historische Texte (Bonn: Minifanal, 2012).

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7. See Jürgen Wilke, “Das Erdbeben von Lissabon als Medienereignis,” Das Erdbeben von Lissabon und der Katastrophendiskurs im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Gerhard Laurer and Thorsten Unger (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2008), 75–95; Ulrich Löffer, Lissabon Fall—Europa Schrecken: Die Deutung des Erbebens von Lissabon im deutschsprachigen Protestantismus des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999). 8. See Kenneth Maxwell, Pombal: Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Ana Cristina Araujo, “The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: Public Distress and Political Propaganda,” e-JPH 4, no. 1 (Summer 2006). 9. See Maxwell, “Pombal: The Paradox of Enlightenment and Despotism,” in Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. H. M. Scott (London: Macmillan, 1990), 75–118. 10. See Cecil Roth, Toldot haanusim (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1953), 246–252; Elkan Nathan Adler, Auto de fe and Jew (London: H. Frowde, 1908), 140, 151. 11. Seder hayom, yom revi’i tov leh. odesh adar rishon shnat 5516 (Amsterdam: Proops Katz, 1756); Elh.anan Tal, ed., Haqehila haashkenazit beamsterdam bamea hayod-h. et (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2010), 204–205; Seder vetiqun teh. inot uvaqashot (Amsterdam in the year of the earthquake, 1756 [5516]). 12. Kitvei ‘azaria min haadumim, selected sections from Sefer maor ‘aynayim and Sefer metsaref lakesef, ed. Reuven Bonfil (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1991), 171–206. 13. Pinh.as Eliyahu Hurwitz , Sefer habrit, Brno 5557 (1797), part I, article 10, chapter 10. Quoted here from Pinh.as Eliyahu Hurwitz, Sefer habrit hashalem (Jerusalem: Yarid Hasefarim, 1990), 167–168. 14. See John Wesley, “Serious Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake (1755),” The Writings of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1872), 1–13; Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 42–43. 15. See Antonio Jose Saraiva, The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and its New Christians 1536–1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 229–230. 16. See Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 42–55. 17. “On the Earthquake of Lisbon,” November 24, 1755, accessed April 24, 2022, https://www.whitman.edu/VSA/letters/24.11.1755.html. 18. Wikisource, s.v. “Poëme sur le désastre de Lisbonne,” trans. J. G., last modified September 27, 2020, https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me _sur_le_d%C3%A9sastre_de_Lisbonne/%C3%89dition_Garnier. 19. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Confessions (Paris: Garnier, 1964), 507; Wikisource, s.v. “Letter to Voltaire on Providence,” trans. J. G., last modified September 19, 2020, https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettre_%C3%A0 _Voltaire_sur_la_Providence. 20. Goethe, Aus meinem Leben, Dichtung und Wahrheit, Erster Theil (Tübingen: J. G. Cottaischen Buchhandlung, 1811), 50–52. See Feiner, The Origins

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of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), ch. 5. 21. Jean le Rond d’Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot,” accessed April 24, 2022, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did /did2222.0001.083/—preliminary-discourse?rgn=main;view=fulltext. On the Encyclopédie, see Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie 1775–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press, 1979). 22. See Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 56–92. 23. Jean Pestre, “Happiness,” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, trans. Nelly S. Hoyt and Thomas Cassirer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo .did2222.0000.153. 24. Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Grove Press, 2006), ch. 4. 25. Georg Friedrich Händel, Theodora (1750), http://opera.stanford.edu/iu /libretti/theodora.htm. 26. See Daniela Tarabra, European Art of the Eighteenth Century, trans. Rosanna Frongia (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), 233. 27. Mark Hallet and Christine Riding, eds., Hogarth (London: Tate, 2007), 190–194 (Beer Street and Gin Street; The Four Stages of Cruelty). 28. Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life, trans. Stephen Sartarelli and Sophie Hawkes (London: Penguin, 2005), 4, 6, 12, 203, 215, 250. 29. Rousseau, Confessions, 422. 30. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, trans. Maurice Cranston (London: Penguin, 1984). 31. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Abhandlung von dem Ursprung der Ungleichheit unter den Menschen, Aus dem Französischen von Moses Mendelssohn, Neu herausgegeben mit einer Einführung und Erläuterungen von Ursula Goldenbaum (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf, 2000). 32. Le Micromégas de M. de Voltaire (Paris: Michel Lambert, 1752); Voltaire, Micromegas, English translation: http://www.wondersmith.com/scifi/micro.htm. 33. Hans Pleschinski, ed., Voltaire: Friedrich der Grosse Briefwechsel (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995), 392–393. “Correspondance de Frédéric avec Voltaire,” Letter n. 341, 20, Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand, 23, accessed May 6, 2022, http://www.friedrich.uni-trier.de/fr/oeuvres/23/20/. 34. Casanova, The Story of My Life, 286–287; Casanova, History of My Life, trans. Willard R. Trask (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 5, chs. 4, 6. 35. On the war, see, among others: Franz A. J. Szabo, The Seven Year War in Europe, 1756–1763 (London: Routledge, 2013); Matt Schumann and Karl Schweizer, The Seven Years War: A Transatlantic History (London: Routledge,

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2008); Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), 575–588; L. W. Cowie, Eighteenth Century Europe (London: Bell & Hyman, 1963), 217–234. 36. Edward Crankshaw, Maria Theresa (London: Bloomsbury Reader, 2013), chs. 13–14. 37. As quoted in Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, 579. 38. See Frank McLynn, 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World (London: Vintage Books, 2008), 392. 39. See Schumaan and Schweizer, The Seven Years War: A Transatlantic History, ch. 3. 40. Voltaire, Candide, ou l’optimisme, accessed April 24, 2022, https://www .ebooksgratuits.com/blackmask/voltaire_candide.pdf. 41. Ibid., chs. 3 and 20. Trans. J. M. G. 42. Ibid., chs. 6, 8–9. 43. See Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, 202–204; The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, trans. Arthur Machen, 3, episode 11, ch. 1, 2012 (ebook); Rousseau, Confessions; Voltaire, Candide. 44. Moses Mendelssohn, “On Sentiments,” in Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings, trans. Daniel Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–129. 45. Mendelssohn, “Dialogues,” ibid., 112–116. 46. See Lucy Stuart Sutherland, “Samson Gideon: Eighteenth Century Jewish Financier,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 17 (1951/1952): 79–90; Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), 136–140. 47. See Y. Kolisher, “Hayehudim veta’asiyat hameshi beprusia bamea hayodh.et,” He’avar 2 (1918): 108–128. 48. See Selma Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, vol. 3, 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 227–254; Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of Absolutism in Europe (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1985), ch. 6; Ludwig Geiger, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin, vol. 2 (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 140–144; Steven M. Lowenstein, “Jewish Upper Crust and Berlin Jewish Enlightenment: The Family of Daniel Itzig,” in From East and West: Jews in Changing Europe 1750–1870, ed. Frances Malino and David Sorkin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 182–201; Schumann and Schweizer, The Seven Years War: A Transatlantic History, 117. 49. See Miriam Bodian, “Hayazamim hayehudim beberlin, hamedina haabsolutistit ve’shipur matsavam haezrah.i shel hayehudim’ bamah.atsit hashniya shel hameah hayod-h.et,” Zion 49 (1984): 175. Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, vol. 3, 2, 345–348.

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50. Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, vol. 11 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 452; ibid., vol. 22, 14–15; Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, vol. 3, 1, 253–254; Stern, The Court Jew, 176. 51. Dov Briling, “Berl Granadir: lebeh.inat haagada ‘al h.ayalim yehudim betseva fridrikh hagadol,” Reshomot 4 (Tel Aviv, 1947): 144–156. 52. Marc Saperstein, “War and Patriotism in Sermons to Central European Jews: 1756–1815,” Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn: Themes and Texts in Traditional Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1966), 152–153; Yequtiel Qamelhor, Mofet hador: toldot rabeinu yeh. ezqe’el landau (Piotrikow: Fulman, 1934), 30–36. 53. Aron Freimann, Leqorot hayehudim beprag beshnot 5502–5517, sefer igeret mah. lat, Qovets ‘al yad 14, 8 (14), Berlin 1898, part 4, from Sefer igeret mah. alat, 64–76. See Ma’oz Kahana, “Shabbat beveit haqafe shel qehilat qodesh prag,” Zion 78 (2013): 26–27. 54. Aron Freimann, Leqorot hayehudim beprag beshnot 5502–5517, 68–74. 55. Qamelhor, Mofet hador, 36; Ezkiel Landau, “Drush hesped,” in Saperstein, “In Praise of an Anti-Jewish Empress: Ezekiel Landau’s Eulogy for Maria Theresa,” Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn, 481. 56. Voltaire, Candide. 57. Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 351–358; Saperstein, “War and Patriotism in Sermons to Central European Jews: 1756–1815,” 147–161; Hirschel Ben Arye Löb Levin, Drashot leshabatot metsuyanot ulemu’adim, London 5515–5523 (1765–1763), The National Library in Jerusalem, Institute for Photocopies of Manuscripts, F 35359. 58. The sermon of Tsvi Hirsh Levin for parashat Beha’alotkha, apparently from 1748, Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800, 357; Charles Duschinsky, The Rabbinate of the Great Synagogue, London, from 1756–1842 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), 9–13. See Cecil Roth, “The Portsmouth Community and its Historical Background,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 13 (1932–1935), 157–181 (esp. 164–166). 59. On the ceremonies and prayers in Berlin during the Seven Years’ War, see Gad Freudenthal, “Rabbi David Fränckel, Moses Mendelssohn, and the Beginning of the Berlin Haskalah: Reattributing a Patriotic Sermon (1757),” European Journal of Jewish Studies 1, no. 1 (2007): 3–33; 4, no. 2 (2011): 315–317; Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10, 2, 390–393; Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973), 67–69; Saperstein, “War and Patriotism in Sermons to Central European Jews: 1756–1815,” 151–152; M. Kayserling, Zum Siegesfeste, Dankpredigt und Danklieder von Moses Mendelssohn (Berlin: L. Gerschel, 1866); Eliezer Landshut, Toldot anshei hashem ufe’ulatam I (Berlin : M. Poppelauer, 1884), 49–58; Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10, 1, 275–296.

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60. Landshut, Toldot anshei hashem, 49–50. 61. See M. Lipschutz, “Notes et mélanges: Un poeme hebraique sur l’attentat de Damiens,” Revue des études juives 84 (1927): 92–95; Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 131–149. 62. Landshut, Toldot anshei hashem, 53; Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10, 2, 391–392. 63. The sermon was published in a special pamphlet in German: Dankpredigt Ueber den grossen und herrlichen Sieg, Whelchen Se. Majestät unser allerweiseste König den 5. Deczember 1757 Ueber die gesammte und weit überlegene Macht der Oesterreichischen Kriegsvölker bey Leuthen in Schlesien erfochten, Gehalten am Sabbath, den 10ten desselben Monath in der Synagoge der hiesigen Judengemeinde von David Hirschel Fränckel Ober-Land-Rabbiner, Berlin, 1757. See Ofri Ilani, Hah. ipus ah. ar ha’am ha’ivri: Tanakh uneorut begermania (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2016), 142–143. 64. Cited in Freudenthal, “Rabbi David Fränckel,” 32. 65. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, (Stuttgart-Bad Cnnstaat: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 38–39, 33–34. 66. Mendelssohn’s letter to Fromet Guggenheim, 1761–1762, in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 57–58, 62, 75, 87–88, 104. 67. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, 1, 52. See Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew, Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749– 1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), ch. 1. 68. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, 1, 8. 69. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11, 98.

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THE PURSUIT OF HONOR AND THE MASKED BALL Azulai and Geldern Wander About in Europe and the East

Did Jerusa lem provide the unifying identity for the Jews in the mid-eighteenth century as Moses Mendelssohn hoped? What did the map of the Jewish universe look like during the years the war was raging? Was there really a sense of unity that supported the shared consciousness of the Jewish people? Or was solidarity already threatened by the state’s demand of fidelity from all its subjects and the growth of patriotism among the Jews? In their journals, two adventurous travelers of the 1750s opened windows from which the landscapes of Jewish society and the tensions in the fabric of its solidarity could be seen. The journal of H.aim Yosef David Azulai (1724–1806) looked upon the Muslim and Christian world of his time through the eyes of a man who was born in Jerusalem and lived in the Ottoman Empire. His father belonged to the elite of the Sephardi Torah scholars from North Africa, his mother was the daughter of Yosef Bialer, a member of the “Holy Society” of Rabbi Judah Hasid, and he was Levantine in his personal identity.1 The second traveler was Simon, the son of Eliezer Geldern of Düsseldorf (1720–1788), a Jewish aristocrat by birth. On his father’s side, he belonged to the rich family of court Jews from the duchies of Jülich and Berg and on his mother’s side, to the family of the court Jew Simon Michael Pressburg of Vienna (1656-1719). However, he constructed his identity with his own hands, specifically as a colorful and hybrid figure of a man of the Middle East and a resident of the Land of Israel. He combined the manners of the royal courts of Europe with the flavors of the Levant: Simon Geldern of Bethulia (Safed) in the Galilee.2

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Th e Enthusi a sm a n d Insu lt of th e L e va ntine Echoes of the Seven Years’ War are audible in both their travel journals. Azulai complained about the difficulties of sea travel, and he was arrested and searched at least twice; when he landed on the shores of England in the spring of 1755, his baggage and clothing were gone through in the customs house in search of documents connected with espionage or foreign coins (“Because there was already the odor of the sound of war from France”), and when he sailed from Livorno in the summer of 1757, a French vessel boarded his ship, and this time it was suspected that “some writings from London” might be found, testifying to his connection with England (“if they had seen any hint, they would have seized upon lies and said that everything came from English properties”).3 Like Voltaire and Goethe, Azulai also shared the great fear in Europe in response to the earthquake in Lisbon and the shock from what appeared to be an exceptionally violent attack on mankind by the forces of nature. He visited the four communities in southern France on the second day of Hanukkah (November 30, 1755) and encountered dangerous floods. The Rhone overflowed its banks: “I saw that the rain fell in fury and power and I have almost never seen anything like it. The rivers grew greatly and the springs and wells rose higher and higher, I had no more breath, and I saw, perish the thought, death before my eyes, and especially because with a few days we heard that Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was overturned in horrors, because the earth devoured it, and fire consumed what was left, and similar changes in the order of the world.” Houses collapsed, merchandise was swept away, and crops were destroyed. Azulai wore sackcloth, recited penitential prayers, swore to make donations, and prayed in tears. Only a month had passed since the disaster in Lisbon, and it had already become a shocking, fundamental existential experience and a signpost calling for the strengthening of religious devotion even for those who only heard the news, including the Jewish emissary raising funds for the community of Hebron.4 Simon Geldern sought to exploit the circumstances of the late stages of the war when he arrived in Paris in 1761 and offered his services to King Louis XV. He wrote that for him, France was merely a stopover on his way back to Safed, but an earthquake had taken place there (October 30, 1759), and it lay in ruins. He hoped to find a position in the court, if not as a librarian in the royal library or a translator, then as a spy. In his letter of request to the king, Geldern claimed to possess all the necessary qualifications. He had mastered not only Hebrew

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and Aramaic, but also German, Spanish, Italian, and French. He had already made a name for himself in the courts of princes, and he had gained the respect of all scholars. During the war, the king could exploit the good connections he had made with rulers, ministers, bankers, and merchants. His family lived in Düsseldorf, and he knew the area very well, so that “I can be very vital for the [French] army on the lower Rhine.” His outer appearance would be no obstacle to such a mission, as he promised to shave off his beard the moment he was appointed, and all his manners would be in French style.5 Not only were the emissary from Hebron and the traveler from Düsseldorf close to the same age, traversing similar routes between Europe and the East— each had visited Livorno, London, Paris, and Amsterdam—but they also wore similar clothing. Azulai retained his Levantine look even though it attracted attention and provoked reactions, whereas Geldern, since returning to Europe from the Land of Israel in 1753, had adopted a Middle Eastern appearance; he had a beard and wore a long robe and a turban. What was for the former an integral part of his identity in his country of origin was for the latter a costume that helped him to create an exotic image, to open doors, and to gain supporters and funds. However, in their travels in Jewish communities, they were both suspected as imposters who could not be trusted. Azulai and Geldern were among the decidedly autonomous figures to which the eighteenth century gave rise. They were both highly sensitive to their lives as individuals and were deeply insulted when they failed to receive proper respect. They were curious and sought experiences and adventures, and they were excited when their travels exposed them to fascinating and unexpected encounters. Though they passed through the same places, the social and cultural maps they drew were rather different. From the start, Azulai’s voyage was limited to his mission as an emissary from the Land of Israel. However, he also made it a journey of inspection and criticism of the communities he visited because of his self-awareness as a senior member of the leading rabbinical elite. In contrast, Geldern was free of any public obligation, and his journeys were an adventurous way of life for him; a constant struggle for daily existence was interwoven with his experiences as a tourist and interactions with dozens—even hundreds—of men and women, and he exploited opportunities for amusement and pleasure. Had he received the desirable post in the court of the French king, he would not, as noted, have been deterred from shedding both his Oriental and his Jewish guise. Rabbi Azulai was only twenty-nine when he left the Land of Israel via Egypt, and he was industrious and curious. He had been provided with many documents testifying to his mission and his scholarly attainments, and he was convinced that the Jewish communities would greet him with open arms, despite

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his youth, and shower him with honor. Was he not a fine representative of two important basic values of the network that consolidated and linked the Jews to one another everywhere in the world? He was the official emissary of the Jewish community of the Holy Land, which joined images of the ancient past with hopes for a messianic future, and he was also a member of a group of Torah scholars who were responsible, as spiritual leaders, for the setting of social and religious norms6 However, in his first stops in Italy, and even more strongly in the communities of Germany, the Sephardi rabbi realized that these values were being reexamined and no longer were self-evident in the Jewish world, which was undergoing change and experiencing division. Moses Hagiz (1671–1751) had also discovered this fifty years earlier, when he poured out his heart in Sefat emet (1707) on the betrayal of the Land of Israel for more comfortable settlement in the cities of Western Europe. Perhaps the Emden-Eybeschütz dispute, which weakened the status of the rabbis, was already felt. In light of this, Azulai’s journey also became a modern journey of a critical inspector: Were the Jews in various locations willing to help their brethren in Hebron and Jerusalem? Did they meet the demands of kosher food? Did they honor the rabbis as they ought to? Azulai’s journal went beyond the story of his meetings with communities and his success or failure in raising money. It also included quite a few accounts of the experiences of an enthusiastic tourist thirsty for the marvelous, the strange, and the curious. For example, in Istanbul, he pushed his way with enthusiasm into the huge crowd to view the coronation procession for Sultan Mustafa III (November 3, 1757).7 The gardens in Florence, the library in Paris, and the Goldenes Dachl (golden roof) in Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, greatly impressed the rabbi from Jerusalem. Some sites in Europe received special attention, such as the institutions of the government of the Republic of Venice: “Whenever I passed the magistratus, my eyes looked at the great fortresses of hewn stone . . . and the cavaliers from the senate promenade in their great wigs without hats and dressed in black vestments.” The greatest attraction was the Tower of London and the exotic zoological garden, which he visited in the summer of 1755. In his enthusiasm, he wrote in his journal: “They took me to a fortress called the Tower, and there I saw lions and an eagle that was a hundred years old and a cat [tiger] from India as big as a dog.” He saw an exhibition of medieval arms and armor and “all the kings of England, their portraits and images carved in iron and mounted on iron horses, and whoever sees the sight of it with his eyes will judge as if they have the spirit of life in them marvelously.” The high point was the crown jewels: “In a slightly dark room, an iron fence dividing it, and inside they showed us the royal crown and brilliant crown jewels full

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of gleams and glowing like lightning and a golden cup from which they anoint the king and similar precious vessels, especially for the kings with precious gems and pearls.” When Azulai left the tower, a feeling of inferiority gnawed at his heart. Compared to the splendor and power that belonged to “those who disobey His will,” the low state of the Jewish people stood out even more, and he could only hope that in the days of the Messiah, a substantial change would take place in the miserable condition of “the survivors of Israel.”8 Azulai’s feeling of foreignness, shared by his servant Shmuel Ben H.aim, enabled them to make a comparative and relative observation of the different groups that populate the world in their colors and varieties. They couldn’t always communicate with the people they met, as knowledge of Hebrew, Ladino, and Italian was not helpful with the Christians and Jews. In the Yiddishspeaking Ashkenazi communities, Azulai’s frustration grew, and his awareness of being an other from the East grew stronger. His Oriental garb and beard attracted attention and mockery. When he and Haim were waiting for a riverboat in Schweinfurt, on the banks of the Main, they were conspicuous. People stood next to them and insulted them, Azulai reported: “Families of men, women, and children . . . stared with surprise at our clothing and hair and beards and shouted and laughed.”9 The trip to Europe began in Livorno, and the first surprise came a few days after Azulai and his servant left there after the High Holidays. On November 4, 1753, they encountered the small community of Monte San Savino in Tuscany. Just as they entered the town, “blacksmiths and workers with coal” greeted them with shouts, and a crowd immediately gathered around them, laughing at their appearance: “A frenetic spirit seized them, and they began to bang their hammers on the anvils and shout as if, perish the thought, a wild animal had come, and with shouting and commotion people gathered, and the children shouted and laughed, and we came to the land humiliated and shamed, frightened and panicked.” To their great disappointment, the Jews in the small community did not offer them shelter, and no one opened their homes to take them in. “When we reached the Jews, no one gathered us in,” wrote Azulai with a deep feeling of indignation. They remained in the street, and only after Azulai reprimanded the lay leader for abandoning them so shamefully did he relent and invite them to stay with him: “I said to him, woe to the generation that you lead, does it seem proper to you to show contempt for an emissary from the Land of Israel like a nobody?” Azulai’s judgment was severe, and, seeing the way he was ignored, he echoed the words of Abraham: “Only there is no fear of God in this place” (Gen. 20:11). He had some compensation two weeks later in Ancona. At a meeting with scholars who were capable of respecting his

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abilities, they discussed the Torah with him, and their hospitality made him feel at home. Henceforth, throughout his entire trip, Azulai was to discover that the religious connections that linked the members of the scholarly elite and their shared familiarity with the Torah were what traced, more than anything, the unified map of Judaism. The honor lavished upon him led to the great admiration he showed for the community of Ancona: “These people have integrity, and they rival each other in their goodness to give more honor to emissaries from the Land of Israel. Even to me, a young man, they did wondrously, by day and by night, until midnight, the visits by the important leaders and rabbis of the city did not cease.”10 The disrespect he encountered in the communities of Germany stunned Azulai, and he clung to the meetings with scholars and to the rare books that he found in the libraries of rabbis and notables so as not to lose completely the feeling of sharing the Jewish fate. He was suspected as an imposter there, like others who had pretended to be emissaries. They refused to place faith in the documents attesting to his mission and the recommendations that he presented, and they insisted on an arrangement that required him to direct the contributions to the Land of Israel solely to Ashkenazim. In contrast, Geldern wrote of Azulai’s success in raising funds: “In 5515 [1755] in our country, Ashkenaz, H.akham Azulai from Jerusalem, who had gone as an emissary of Hebron, collected and gathered an enormous amount in Ashkenaz.” Nevertheless, Azulai himself wrote that he was harassed. In Pfersee, which is near Augsburg, in Bavaria, people alleged “that all the documents that were with me were false,” and in Harburg, they did everything they could to drive him out and even refused to allow him to pray with a minyan (quorum of ten men) in the synagogue. To heighten the insult, in the morning he found that they had arranged for a garbage wagon to take him away promptly. Pained by the humiliation, he refused: “After prayers I saw at the entrance to the courtyard a wagon used to remove garbage . . . and seeing that wagon, I said that I would not ride in it. Bring me a coach, and I will pay for the driver and the horse.” However, the beadle of the community didn’t give in and acted with violence: “When I reached the entrance of the house, they closed the door and threw my clothing out and tossed out everything of ours, and the beadle grabbed my clothes and put them on the wagon.” This coarseness and disrespect shocked Azulai. It appeared to him that Jewish solidarity had unraveled completely, “and with the fury of my spirit and the sorrows of my head, I walked to the doorpost, and streams of water flowed from my eyes, and I shouted to the Lord, Master of the Universe . . . Give me strength to bear and act on behalf of the Land of Israel and my ancestors and save me.”11

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Azulai surmised that the center of the map of Jewish Germany was the dominant and flourishing community of Frankfurt am Main. There, although his documents were examined meticulously, he received generous hospitality and the honor he expected. He left Frankfurt for several days for Worms, beginning on July 17, 1754, to meet Rabbi Joshua Falk, the famous rabbi who had left the rabbinate in Frankfurt and, in the last years of his life, was involved, as noted, in the Eybeschütz controversy. For Azulai, this was the most exciting visit in his entire journey. Despite the forty-five-year difference in age, they immediately found a common language. Azulai felt that he had reached the pinnacle of the Jewish hierarchy, and the old rabbi certainly felt content when Azulai told him that his book was also studied in the Land of Israel and united all the scholars between Worms and Jerusalem, both Ashkenazim and Sefardim. “I immediately went to greet the rabbi, the aforementioned author of Pnei yehoshua’,” Azulai wrote excitedly, “and his sight was like the sight of an angel of God, and he in his grace smiled upon me . . . and among the things that I told him was that his clear book was seen visibly in the Land of the Beauty, and that all the rabbis of Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt and established, basked in the glow of the light of his Torah.” The rabbi hosted him in his home and confirmed that his documents were authentic and that he was indeed “a true emissary.” Then, after trust had been established, he unburdened himself of what was in his heart, and Azulai was exposed to the full, shocking emotional force of the Emden-Eybeschütz controversy. Falk told him “distressing things, and he showed me various documents, and their sight was like torches, and the chorus of rabbis of Poland and Ashkenaz, in a single style, prophesy that they shall surely be burned . . . against the amulets that Rabbi Jonathan wrote, from which one may infer that from his childhood through his old age he held belief in Shabbetai Zevi.” In their conversation, no doubt regarding Eybeschütz’s Sabbateanism arose, and when Falk showed Azulai the letter of defense written by the rabbis of Istanbul in favor of Eybeschütz, Azulai conjectured that it was a forgery. He was appalled to learn that the episode had been reverberating for a long time in the general public sphere. “My world turned black for me because of the desecration of the Torah and of the Name of God,” Azulai wrote, “because it was heard among the gentiles and written in gazettes that the sages of Israel share with a rabbi of extreme wisdom knowledge that the Messiah has already come, and the rest of the sages rise up like a wall against him and against the truth and the religion of Jesus.” His pain because of the “desecration of the Torah” was compounded during his visit to Worms with a severe toothache that tormented him (“A toothache pained me very powerfully . . . and I could not overcome it, not standing and not sitting, and not lying down”). As with

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other bodily afflictions, he did not conceal this in his journal. “Until the world almost went dark for me”—Azulai used those words to describe the somber feeling and despair that assailed him, both because of his physical pain and because of his concern for the damage caused to the Jewish religion from within and from without.12 The communities of Western Europe, especially the leaders, rabbis, and Sephardic scholars Azulai met with, offered him a series of compensatory and consoling experiences, making up for his poor treatment in some areas of Italy and Ashkenaz. In Amsterdam, he said, the wealthy aristocrats of the Texeira, da Prado, Lumbroso, and de Costa families competed to host the honored emissary. In his map of Jewish tourism, Amsterdam was placed at the top of the places that he knew: “I did not see any city of such beauty and splendor, beautified and polished and clean with correct order such as Amsterdam and the fame of the holy community of the Sephardim in Amsterdam has spread throughout the land.” The visit to Paris in the summer of 1755 was even more exciting. Azulai stayed with scientist Jacob Rodrigues Pereira , the descendant of Marranos who returned to Judaism in Bordeaux and the first teacher of sign language for the deaf in France. While his meeting with Rabbi Falk had confirmed the status of the rabbinical elite as the bearers of Jewish culture on the highest level, the encounter with Pereira opened up the world of European knowledge for him and once again demonstrated the inferiority of the Jews. Azulai wrote enthusiastically, “And the aforementioned Senior Jacob told me something of astonishing wisdom, that with his wisdom and strategies, with a great deal of labor, he managed to take a deaf man, whom the experts said was deaf and dumb from birth and in utero, and he enabled him to speak, that he answered with his mouth what he was asked in writing . . . and that he could write by hand in the language of France and the holy tongue and with his mouth he could read books in the two languages and understand the Bible.” Sign language broke the barrier of speech: “He also trained his hands to make signs with them and knots with his fingers, and every knot was a sign for a letter, and when he wanted to speak with him, with great ease he took up the knots and moved his fingers and signed the letters and the words as he wished.” Pereira’s success in developing communication with the deaf gained recognition from the royal academy of science, and a special gesture was even made by King Louis XV: “Word reached the king of France, and he wanted to see this great sight. Senior Jacob and the deaf boy went before the king, and he was very surprised, and he wrote a letter and signed it with the royal seal to give [him] eight hundred francs annually from the royal treasury.” In Paris, Azulai underwent a considerable cultural

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shock when he accompanied Pereira on a visit to the French Academy of Sciences. The rabbi managed to understand only a few of the explanations about the huge store of knowledge there, but he was impressed that the scholars of Europe enriched human knowledge, whereas the Jewish elite, except for a few exceptional men like Pereira, were relatively weak and did not take part in the development of science.13 On his journey in the mid-eighteenth century, Azulai discovered a dynamic world in constant flux and of varied aspect. The innovations of science astonished him. He looked in from the outside on the burst of creativity and the quantities of knowledge to which he was a stranger, and he found it hard to absorb. The capital cities, which projected governmental power, stunned Azulai, leading him to make a discouraging comparison to the low status of the Jews. As an eyewitness in Istanbul to the coronation of the new sultan, he was enthusiastic about the splendor and wealth there and commented, enviously, in a way similar to his reaction when he left the Tower of London: “May the Lord favor us to see eye to eye the advent of the divine Messiah of Jacob crowned with the crown of crowns soon in our day.” He took note of a degree of fanaticism, hostility, and harassment, which he experienced in the Catholic city of Trento, in northern Italy, and it was one of the peaks of Christian threat for him. When he addressed the governor with a plea to dispense with payment of a high fine for not wearing the special symbol that identified him as a Jew, explaining that he was from Jerusalem and did not know the regulations, the “minister” exploded in anger: “Who placed Israel [the Jews] in Jerusalem, that they should come and contaminate it.” Azulai replied with a humanistic argument, asking for toleration for him as a human being: “Please do this, then, because of my being a creature created by God in His world, and His mercy is on all His deeds.”14 For Azulai, the basic experience of his trip was awareness of the differences among the groups of Jews dispersed in the world. He felt at home at several sites on the Jewish landscape especially when he found scholars like himself, and in other places, he felt alienated. Here and there, as in the community of Bordeaux, he noticed religious laxity ss that worried him, and he was not able to rely on the kashrut in Jewish homes. This was undoubtedly one of the new boundary lines that marked cultural and social rifts.

Th e Fa i lu r e of a Je w ish A r istocr at Geldern did not bear the burden of a mission, and what emerges from the thirty years of his tireless travels in Europe and the Ottoman Empire is primarily the voice of an individual man who sought to experience the world and was never

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able to settle down. He did not even manage to compose an organized travel book. Rather, he documented his life in diary fragments, address books, and precise records of his expenses, and he kept slips of paper, receipts, and letters of recommendation. Whereas Azulai’s identity as a member of the rabbinical elite was clear and evident, Geldern wore various costumes. He was Rabbi Simon, whose Torah background enabled him to pass himself off as a rabbi and to act as a Kabbalist and to wander in the networks of the most prestigious rabbis of his time and obtain their support. He was also an emissary from the Land of Israel and collected contributions for himself, for he possessed a letter of recommendation that he had received from the rabbis of Safed. He was an adventurer like his contemporary Casanova, hobnobbing with the aristocracy and presenting himself as Simon de Geldrin, as von Geldern, and sometimes even as a doctor. A trail of rumors about relations with women of high class in the courts of Europe followed him, but unlike Casanova, he revealed nothing. Nonetheless, in his private notebook he kept the addresses of a woman from a tavern in Naples and of a princess from the royal court of Prussia, for example, and he became addicted to gaming in the exclusive casinos of the Duchess de la Gamba in Torino and of Madame de Reinaud in Nice.15 The conflict between the temptations of libertine life and the religious values that he had imbibed in his youth aroused feelings of remorse and twinges of conscience in Geldern, some of which he reveals in his travel notes. A life of dissipation, betting, and women ruined him: “All the sorrow that I had in the world came from appetites and loss of money. . . . Beware of the company of young men, not to mention women and maidens, and don’t see them at all; I made a covenant with my eyes and why should I look at a maiden?” At the beginning of what was intended to be an autobiography, he declared that he was repentant “for all my transgressions, sins, and crimes.” In the lists of his expenses he also reproaches himself immediately after coming home from a place of entertainment: “I gambled in Pressburg, I sinned, but I will sin no more. . . . I sinned at the opera, and I repent for it and regret it. . . . A comedy, woe is me, for I sinned.”16 A deep feeling of shame and failure plagued him all his life. His parents had invested everything they could in him to prepare him to be a fitting heir of a respectable family from the Jewish financial elite of Europe. Private tutors taught him classical and modern languages as well as riding and fencing skills, and teachers from Poland endowed him with the fundamentals of Talmudic learning. However, nothing of these hopes was fulfilled. The man who was precociously talented as a child proved to be an absolute failure from the point of view of a court Jew. Geldern never married or established a family, and he did

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not manage to fit into financial activities. At the age of twenty-seven, he abandoned his home in Düsseldorf, slamming the door behind him after a quarrel with his father, who insulted him to the depths of his soul. At that moment, his life changed from top to bottom. For thirty years, he lived as a nomad with no home. Though he was without means, he maintained an aristocratic appearance. Geldern describes the shame of being a poor young man whose family connections were widely known: “I did not want to reveal my poor status to anyone.” When a wealthy female relative from London hired him to teach Gemara to her son, he soon departed: “All the time I sat in sorrow and said that this was beneath my dignity and that of my family.”17 His travels were an extended exile for him. In the introduction to his memoirs, he wrote, “Now I am in a foreign land, far from my family and my father’s house.” Again, six years later, as he approached the age of forty, his awareness of failure grew more poignant: “Is there any pain like mine? I was exiled from my father’s house and distanced from my brothers and relatives . . . and I have gone down into a deep pit from a high place; I have gone from failure to failure.”18 The feeling that he had disappointed his father and shamed his family afflicted him. As he wandered alone in various disguises in coaches and on ships among Jewish communities, in palaces, in the homes of relatives, and in inns, with neither friend nor servant to accompany him, he tried to blur his true identity and to forge with his own hands a persona that would gain admiration. In the first years, his journeys took him to several waystations in the network of his extended family, who supported him, hosted him in London and Vienna, and even made an effort to establish him by marriage and by giving him a commercial concession. When none of this succeeded, Geldern traveled through Italy and Egypt to the Land of Israel. He arrived in Safed in the spring of 1751, prostrated himself on the tombs of Kabbalists, and took part in the celebrations of Shimon Bar Yoh.ai (the 2nd century Palestinian rabbinic teacher, and traditionally, author of the Zohar, the most important work of Jewish mysticism) in Mount Meron (the location of Bar Yohai`s tomb). Upon returning to Europe two years later, he passed himself off as an emissary from the Land of Israel and took on the exotic, hybrid figure of a man from the East, a speaker of French and German possessing European manners. In the guise of an emissary, Geldern spent the years from 1753 to 1759 mainly among the major focuses of the rabbinical network and collected letters of recommendation that would assure him the monetary support and recognition associated with senior Torah scholars. He bore with him recommendations from the h.akhamim of Izmir, Adrianople, and Belgrade; from the rabbis of Pressburg, Nikolsburg, and Prague; from dozens of rabbis from Italy; from Rabbi David Fränkel of Berlin; from Rabbi Tsevi

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Hirsch of Copenhagen; and from the great rivals in the dispute over the amulets: Shmuel Hillman of Metz, Falk of Frankfurt, and Eybeschütz of Altona. They were all impressed by him and convinced that it was proper to support a man who was willing to risk his life to dwell in the Land of Israel, as Eybeschütz wrote of him in early 1756: “Rabbi Simon, who left in his youth, foreswore all the pleasures of the age and went to pitch his tent in the holy city of Safed.”19 At least from Geldern’s experience, support for the small Jewish community in the Land of Israel was one of the axes of Jewish solidarity, and he exploited that effectively. At the end of that year, he kept his promise and returned to Safed. However, because he fell ill, the visit was short, and he returned to Italy in a few weeks. When he arrived to Amsterdam in 1759, he convinced the heads of the Ashkenazic community to raise money for “the accomplished h.akham, our rabbi and teacher Simon de Gelder,” and, on the basis of the many letters of recommendation he showed them, they acceded to his request for a regular stipend over ten years so that he could settle in the Land of Israel. Geldern promised that he would only represent the Ashkenazim, but in order to avoid fraud, they demanded, as a condition, that every year he must send them a signed letter to eliminate any doubt that he was still living there. A letter from an anonymous friend shows that the people in his surroundings found it hard to decipher his complex identity, full of inner contradictions. The guardians of the gates of tradition in Amsterdam regarded him as “free in his opinions,” whereas the freethinkers regarded him as a hypocrite and the hypocrites saw him as one of the most devoted to religion; therefore, he repelled everyone. Women found him affable and chivalrous, the wealthy envied him because he came from a good family, and, with regard to his dress, the author of the letter tore away his mask and mocked him: he was dressed like a Turk, but without wide trousers and sandals, and no one would take him for a true man of the Orient.20 Geldern continued to wander about Europe and did not exploit the promise he had received for a permanent stipend. The earthquake that destroyed the buildings of Safed served as an excuse for not returning to the Land of Israel. An autobiographical note in one of his last letters shows that in fact his Levantine disguise was not accompanied by any feeling of identification with the Muslim Near East. On the contrary, he was repelled by it: “Twenty years ago I decided to travel to Safed in the Galilee and finish out my life there, but, although I was young, the climate and the barbaric behavior of the Arabs [forced me to leave].” In a despairing letter to his father, he admitted that in his journey to Syria, which brought him to the community of Aleppo, he realized “that we Ashenazim are despicable in their eyes” and that a visit from an Ashkenazi was “a new thing, because for more than fifty years no German had been seen

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in that country.” In addition to the networks of his family, rabbis, and Jewish communities, Geldern was attracted by the brilliance of Europe. Although he was moved by the sight of Mount Carmel as he approached Haifa and by the pyramids in Egypt, he was more drawn to the great cities of Europe. Despite the war, political borders were of no significance to a traveler like Geldern, who passed through France, Austria, Prussia, and England many times, though they were opposed to each other on the battlefield. He made connections with diplomats and princes and also collected letters of recommendation that paved his way into high society. He mainly sought honor and admiration. In 1756, a few months after the outbreak of the war, Geldern visited the palace of Friedrich II in Potsdam, met the chief minister, and recorded in his diary that he had been privileged to converse with the son of one of the princes. A year after that, he went to the opera in Naples, and, in the company of a friend from the French embassy in Sicily, he climbed Vesuvius. In 1760, Geldern went to meet Voltaire in his chateau near Geneva. He apparently succeeded in concealing his Jewish identity, and, for the philosopher who had just published the adventures of Candide, he aroused curiosity as a guest who seemed to leap from the pages of his book. Voltaire took him for “an Arab who lives near Sidon, speaks French, and is expert in the ways of life in the Orient.”21 At this stage in his life, Geldern also yearned for a permanent home and an end to his wanderings. His tribulations had become intolerable. However, his application to the king of France went unanswered, so he tried his luck with Karl I (1713–1780), the duke of Braunschweig. In a letter of request, he boasted of his family relations, mentioned that his grandfather had been an agent of the emperor’s in Vienna, and mainly emphasized his excellence as a man of the great world: “Senior von Geldern, a doctor from Safed in the Galilee, who has gained great renown in his journeys among all the courts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and almost all the princes honored him.” Only religious piety had impelled him to leave Europe and settle by himself in Safed, although the unbearable conditions of life and the harassment of the Turks and Arabs, who plotted to rob his money, did not permit him to stay there for long. Now he implored the duke to give him a permanent post as professor or translator or perhaps as a librarian specializing in Hebrew and Aramaic in the rich and impressive library of Wolfenbüttel.22 Another sixteen years would pass before these efforts bore fruit, and he was forced to travel until the last decade of his life, when, in the guise of an expert on the esoteric doctrines of the Jews, he found a permanent post in an aristocratic court in Germany. What appears to be Geldern’s masked ball in fact reflected the freedom of the autonomous individual who, of necessity

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or by choice, lived in constant motion with shifting identities; he, who had been destined to be a businessman worthy of his wealthy family of merchants, proved to be a Jew of the rococo period—colorful, splendid, and contradictory—whose life repeatedly passed through royal courts, gambling casinos, and opera houses, as well as synagogues, the homes of rabbis, and the tombs of Kabbalists in the Galilee, occasionally on the verge of starvation and begging for charity. When the famous German poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was a young boy, he found one of the journals written by Geldern—his grandfather’s brother—in the attic of his home in Düsseldorf. Family lore, which was etched in his soul, included tales of the marvels of the libertine adventurer, “the Chevalier or the Oriental,” who traveled to Jerusalem and who, in the courts of ministers, “was distinguished as much by his personal beauty and dignity as by the splendour of his oriental dress, which casts its spell particularly over the ladies.” And he “made his most striking impression by his pretended secrets.” Heine, who converted and was exiled from Germany because of his liberal opinions, who experienced himself the crises of Jewish identity at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and who was torn between Judaism and Christianity, recounted in his memoirs that Geldern’s fantastic life nourished his imagination and that “everything that was told about him made an ineradicable impression on my young spirit .” In Geldern he seems to have found both a source of inspiration for his literary imagination and a romantic connection with a Jew between the West and the East. So powerful was the inspiration that Heine drew from the aristocrat with his many identities that he felt as if he had completely melded into him: “I was so steeped in his wanderings and fortunes, that often in the clear light of the sun I was seized by an uncanny feeling, and it seemed to me that I myself might be my deceased great-uncle, and was living only a continuation of a life long since laid down.”23

Note s 1. H.aim Yosef David Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov hashalem, ed. Aron Freimann (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1934). See Meir Benayahu, Rabbi h. aim yosef david azulai (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1959); Avraham Ya’ari, Sheluh. ei erets yisrael (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1951), 569–580; Yaron Tsur, Gevirim veyehudim ah. erim bamizrah. hatikhon haotomani, 1750–1830 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2016); Matthias B. Lehmann, “Levantinos and Other Jews: Reading H.Y.D. Azulai’s Travel Diary,” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 3 (2007): 1–34; Yaacob Dweck, “A Jew from the East Meets Books from the West,” in

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Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard L. Cohen et al. (Pittsburg: Hebrew Union College Press, 2014), 239–249. 2. See Ludwig Rosenthal, Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon von Geldern (Düsseldorf: Henn, 1978); David Kaufmann, Aus Heinrich Heine’s Ahnensaal (Breslau: Schottlaender 1896), 100–160, 283–309; Fritz Heymann, Der Chevalier von Geldern: Eine Chronik vom Abenteuer der Juden (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1937), 245–359; Ludwig Rosenthal, “Simeon van Geldern, Heinrich Heine’s Famous Great Uncle, in Holland,” Studia Rosenthaliana 6 (1972): 180–203; Rosenthal, “Die Beziehungen des ‘Chevalier van Geldern’ zu regierenden Fürstenhäusern, hohen Staatsbeamten und andern Standespersonen,” Heine Jahrbuch 14 (1975): 115–151. 3. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 30–31, 42–43. 4. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 39. 5. Rosenthal, Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon von Geldern, 120–122. 6. See Matthias Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). 7. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 44–45. On his visit to Istanbul and his great enthusiasm for the city and the coronation procession, see Tsur, Gevirim veyehudim ah. erim, 23–36. 8. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 9–10, 32–33. 9. Ibid., 19, 26, 31. 10. Ibid., 5–6. 11. Ibid., 13–19; Naphtali Herz Torczyner, “Mimikhtavei d. glidern ‘al nesi’otav beretz israel,” Jerusalem dedicated to the memory of Avraham Moshe Lunz, 1938, 108–110. 12. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 23–24; see Oded Cohen, “Emunot psulot, sefarim kesharim: gishato shel hah.ida leh. akhamim shabtaim uleh.ibureihem,” Zion 83 (2018): 323–350. 13. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 28–29, 34, 38–39. See Shulamit Volkov, “Hah.ershim keqevutsat mi’ut: reshit hamavaq ‘al sefat hasimanim,” Historia 1 (1998): 55–94; Renee Neher-Bernheim, “Jacob Rodrigues Pereira,” The 7th World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1981), 57–66. 14. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 44–45, 11, respectively. 15. See Rosenthal, Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon von Geldern, 20–21. 16. Shim’on de Gelder, Yoman mehashanim 5477–5512 (1717–1752), photocopy of manuscript in the Schocken Library, Jerusalem, Department of MS Photocopies, National Library, Jerusalem, 37a, 9a, respectively. F49319. 17. Shimon de Gelder, Yoman, fol. 6b; Kaufmann, Aus Heinrich Heine’s Ahnensaal, 289–290.

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18. Shimon de Gelder, Yoman, fols. 1a-b; de Gelder, Kitvei qodesh umelitsot (Amsterdam: Unknown, 1760). 19. Some of these recommendations were published: Geldern, Kitvei qodesh umelitsot. 20. See Rosenthal, “Simeon van Geldern,” 201–202. 21. Rosenthal, Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon von Geldern, 128, 48–49; letter from Simon Geldern to Eliezer Geldern (apparently from 1766), in Torczyner, “Mimikhtavei d. glidern ‘al nesi’otav beretz israel,” 109–110. 22. Rosenthal, Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon von Geldern, 122–124. 23. Gustav Karpeles, ed., Heinrich Heine’s Memoirs: From His Works, Letters, and Conversations, trans. Gilbert Cannan (London: William Heinemann, 1910), 26–28.

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GET OUT, JEWS! Tests for Tolerance between London, Zhitomir, Yampol, and Rome

In the summer of 1753, pamphlets were sold—for six pennies each—that contained a cartoon entitled A Prospect of the New Jerusalem. This was one of the visual expressions of the vigorous propaganda warning that the Jews would take over England in the wake of the citizenship law that had recently been passed in Parliament. Three Jews, whose pointed beards and hooked noses leave no doubt as to their identity and who are wearing the fashionable dress of the period, look with satisfaction toward houses in London, which is soon to become Jerusalem, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, which will be the Temple. In the lower right corner of the drawing, Satan can be seen holding a moneybag containing half a million pounds to be used as bribes for “the two brothers,” Henry Pelham (1694–1754) and Thomas Pelham-Holles (1693–1768), the Duke of Newcastle, who headed the government and supported the law. In the opposite corner stands “Britannia,” frightened, diminished, and defeated. The shield and spear, which symbolize her heroism as an icon of the kingdom, lie on the ground. “Christ, Save Us from His Enemies the Jews,” shouts the caption in the margins of the caricature.1

“Old Engl a n d a n d Chr isti a nit y For e v er!”: Th e Je w Bi ll In the wake of the conflict over what was called the Jew Bill, a vocal protest movement arose. For about a year, it aroused a commotion in English public opinion and politics. In itself this was a decidedly modern phenomenon, made possible in a society where there were already well-developed communications media—newspapers, pamphlets, and cartoons—as well as many locations for

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social encounters, such as coffeehouses and places of entertainment. Together these created a vibrant public space and a civil community that exploited the freedom of opinion to voice social and political criticism.2 The two Jewish travelers, Simon Geldern and H.aim Yosef David Azulai, visited London in the 1750s, shortly after the storm died down. They each brought the earthly and contemporary Jerusalem in their costume, their own stories about the conditions of life, and their demands of the Jews not to turn their backs but to support those who chose to live a holy life there. However, they mentioned neither this episode nor the venomous accusations that Jerusalem would be reestablished as a messianic destination in England, of all places. Although the law and the protest touched directly on the fate of the Jews, the main discussion in the English political system took place between the party in power, the Whigs, and their Tory rivals, as well as in the arena of public opinion. After the law was revoked, almost no residue of the dispute remained, and it was soon relegated to the margins. Azulai and Geldern might not have even heard about it. However, the Jew Bill was a significant event in the history of the Jews of Europe, one of the meaningful test cases in midcentury about which Locke, Montesquieu, Lessing, and others had already expressed their opinion as a challenge to the Enlightenment and the state: Could Jews be citizens, too? The law itself did not purport to offer equality, and the legislators in the Parliament in London hardly related to it in principled terms of a dramatic change in the status of the Jews, required by the doctrine of tolerance. For example, none of them considered turning the daring proposal made by John Toland (1670–1722) in 1714 to grant citizenship to the Jews of Great Britain and Ireland from a marginal utopian idea of a radical deist to political reality. The intention was limited and restricted: to facilitate the business of a few wealthy members of the Jewish community, which already numbered about 8,000 Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The initiative was made by Joseph Salvador (1716–1786), a prominent member of the Sephardic elite, who addressed the prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, on January 14, 1753, requesting an extension of the Plantation Act of 1740 to enable Jews who had not been born in England or lived for seven years in its colonies to become citizens of the colonies and be exempt from certain taxes and restrictions. Salvador used the mercantilist argument that every state was interested in promoting commerce and attracting men of property. In the case of the Jews, all that was necessary to do was decide that the process of naturalization, which would remain within the province of special legislation of the Parliament with regard to each individual request, would not require a Christian religious ceremony or taking a Christian oath.3

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Although the Jew Bill only affected a privileged few among the Jewish aristocracy and was very far from being a general naturalization law, in fact, severing the connection between civil status and the authorization of the Church became, upon the initiative of the liberal Whigs, another step toward implementing the dream of Locke and his successors, who advocated a clear division of areas of responsibility between state and Church. The Jew Bill was also unique in the political landscape of the mid-eighteenth century, because only in England, with its particular, mixed political system in which the aristocracy limited the authority of the king, were discussions held in Parliament about the status of the Jews, and laws were passed by majority vote in both houses. King George II (1683–1760) signed the law but was not involved in it, nor did he express an opinion. He was not an absolute monarch like Friedrich II, who determined the rights and duties of his Jewish subjects in Prussia in the General Privilege of 1750. Azulai met Salvador in the summer of 1755 and believed he would assist him in his mission. The wealthy lay leader, who had just returned from a vacation in a spa, taught him how different the rules of the political game were in England: “Thus he answered me, do you not know that in these countries, there is no one on the earth who can supply what you ask for on his own. . . . Nothing happens except with the agreement of the majority.”4 In a relatively swift process, just a month and a half after it was proposed, the Jew Bill was passed (May 22, 1753) on its third reading and went into effect with the king’s signature. Its most important line, which was written exactly as Salvador had requested, stated that people of the Jewish religion could, upon making a request of this purpose, receive citizenship from Parliament without taking a Christian oath.5 However, the wave of protest exaggerated the import of the law and nevertheless attributed principled meaning to it. The critics argued forcibly that the very future of all the inhabitants of England and its identity as a country depended on the law of naturalization. As shown by Thomas Perry, who retraced the snowball effect of the episode, right after the second reading of the law (May 7, 1753), vociferous opposition was heard in Parliament, and petitions from the mayor and merchants of the city were read. The law would flood London with Jewish competitors, they claimed. It showed contempt for the Christian religion and endangered the excellent constitution.6 After the law was passed, the opposition moved to the arena of public opinion, and the political and economic rivalry between the Whigs and Tories came into play with a campaign of intimidation that played on sentiments and prejudices and attacked the Jews and Judaism. The moment the press took up the political dispute, the Jew Bill became a burning issue in the news; more and more items, both about the debates

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in Parliament and about the protest, were published, and the debate spread to cities and villages outside of the capital. Over the course of a year, about eighty pamphlets and leaflets spread propaganda. With a few exceptions, they all warned against the dire consequences of the dangerous law. Stability would be undermined, the existing order would be violated, and the Jewish group— who crucified Jesus, who were subjects of Satan in the likeness of Shylock with hooked noses, and who were cunning and despicable peddlers and rich stockbrokers—would be reinforced by “foreigners” and become a powerful minority. The slogans of the protest movement expressed these fears clearly: “No to the Jews! No to the naturalization law! Old England and Christianity forever!” By means of the fortunes of Jews like Samson Gideon, with the support of members of Parliament, the opponents argued, the Jewish plot to take over England would be advanced. “Old England” was threatened by the “New Jerusalem.” Wearing crosses and eating pork were regarded as expressions of British solidarity and patriotism and Christian loyalty. The cartoon A Prospect of the New Jerusalem fit into the dystopian vision of the way England would look in another hundred years: “The following song is recommended to be sung by the few Christians that may be remaining in the country one hundred years hence:” When mighty Roast Pork was the Englishman’s food, It ennobled our Veins and enriched our blood, And a Jews dish of foreskins was not understood, Sing oh! The Roast Pork of old England. Oh! The Old English Roast Pork. To circumcise all is most cruel and fell; Then such a Desire let us boldly repel; For but give them an Inch, and they’ll soon take an Ell.

The Ballad of the victory of the Jews proclaimed that the British would become servants of the circumcised Jews, like the black people and the slaves. The news of the future was frightening, even when it was presented as a satire: “Yesterday night the law for the naturalization of Christians was rejected by the Sanhedrin with a large majority, or Last Friday throughout the kingdom a great celebration was held on the day of the crucifixion.” A fictional advertisement in an evening newspaper in June 1753 highlighted Moses Ben Omri, a surgeon who performed circumcisions in his home most quickly, easily, and expertly. He was even willing to make house calls for the high born. According to propaganda, Christians who spoke against the Mishnah would be lashed, St. Paul’s Cathedral would become a synagogue, and laws would be passed forbidding

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the import of pork. There was an item about criminal smuggler George the Briton, who was sent to Newgate Prison under heavy guard after he was caught on the Sussex coast bringing a pig into the country. Here and there, the protest overflowed from propaganda literature to the public arena. When spectators in a theater noticed Jewish men and women in the balcony, “they began to shout at them, No Jews! Jews get out!” They threw apples at them until they were forced to leave. The play only continued after a member of the audience intervened and asked everyone to return to their seats.7 The propaganda influenced the political system, and voters were asked not to support those in favor of the bill. The Jew Law also found its way into an election poster in Oxfordshire in 1754. A satirical picture by Hogarth criticizes the political corruption infecting both parties by depicting a vulgar banquet to enlist voters, while outside, a procession passes bearing the effigy of a bearded Jew with a sign around its neck that reads “No Jews!”8 A pamphlet by Josiah Tucker (1713–1799) stood out among the serious responses to the protests in the streets and the campaign of intimidation. He was a clergyman from Bristol who was involved in English politics and a principled supporter of the Jew Law. Tucker sought to separate the political issue from the religious arguments that were attached to it and from anti-Jewish rhetoric. He justified the law in the name of common humanity, arguing that it was inconceivable that England should join forces with the Catholic Inquisition that burned Judaizers at the stake. It was ridiculous to believe the propaganda threatening that London would become Jerusalem, and the hostile slogans were all inventions intended to incite the masses.9 During the long months after Parliament passed the law, the voice of the Jews themselves was not heard in the agitated public discussion. Not a single leaflet or pamphlet was written by a Jew to defend against the wave of accusations and venomous barbs. However, Samson Gideon, who was identified with the Jew Bill and vilified by the propaganda, took the radical step of severing his connection with the Jewish community. He wrote to the lay leaders of the Sephardic community of London on September 5, 1753, saying he had never supported the law and that it was impossible for him to continue to be a member of a body that ostensibly represented him in the struggle to obtain it. He opposed innovation adamantly and had not granted the community a power of attorney to speak in his name. Therefore, he no longer acknowledged its authority. Gideon slammed the door behind him: “I hereby declare that I am no longer and will not be a member of your society or community.” For an individual who had decided to pave the way for himself and his family to integrate and assimilate into the highest British aristocracy, identification with the Jew Bill

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was an obstacle. He demanded that henceforth his name would be erased from any document testifying to membership in the Jewish community.10 The protest movement proved to be effective and successful. The members of the government and Parliament could neither resist the pressure exerted by public opinion nor ignore the voice of the masses and the atmosphere of panic aroused by intimidation regarding the consequences of the law. In a hasty legislative process, the Jew Bill was revoked by Parliament early in the winter of 1753, before it was applied even once. The king signed the revocation of the law on December 20. The legislators did not deny that they had succumbed to pressure, and in the preamble to the bill of revocation, they wrote: “The Bill in question aroused discomfort and disquiet among many of his majesty’s subjects.”11 With respect to English politics, this was perhaps merely a transitory episode, and the temporary outburst of public hostility did not prevent the Jews from taking root in England. Until the obligation to take a Christian oath was abolished in the course of the nineteenth century and Jews were able to serve in Parliament, the Jewish community was established under conditions of freedom and tolerance, even without explicit legislation. However, in the history of the Jewish eighteenth century, the episode of the Jew Bill, with the arguments advanced for and against it, and the tension between tradition and modernity that was revealed in it was an important one. For the first time (following the Plantation Act), the issue of the civil status of the Jews entered free public discussion in Parliament and afterward in modern critical public opinion. Nearly forty years would pass before a similar discussion was held in revolutionary France and the Assemblée Nationale granted full citizenship to the Jews. In the political and social discussion in England, not only did the issue of the naturalization of foreigners arise, but hostile images and rhetoric began flooding England, identifying the Jews with Bible stories and the Christian tradition. The country was in danger, the opponents shouted; in effect, they consolidated the characteristics of British patriotism in public opinion, as the Jews became the absolute other who needed to be removed. The danger of the New Jerusalem combined messianic imagery with the fear of a blow to masculinity (forced circumcision) and a plot of plutocrats to take over “Old England” with their money. As with all discussions of the Jews and Judaism during the century, the Jew Bill was also a touchstone for the principles of the Enlightenment, and several critical spokesmen felt shame and disappointment because of the tenor of the opposition and said so explicitly. William Pitt, for example, was shocked by a proposal advanced by the Tories to rescind the Plantation Act at the same time, and he decried the Church’s lack of tolerance. Horace Walpole (1717–1797), a

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prominent member of Parliament and a sharp-witted author and intellectual, did not conceal his displeasure. He regarded the protest against the law and especially its revocation as blows against progress, showing how far the so-called enlightened age was still enslaved to the coarsest and most vulgar prejudices. Not only had Parliament surrendered to pressure from the street and showed weakness, but for anyone who thought that Christian fanaticism had faded away, this episode came and slapped them in the face.12 Although the effort to open even a limited gateway to Jewish naturalization had failed and the public discussion had raised to the surface a menacing image of the dangerous Jews, the Jewish Bill and the dispute over it marked a turning point in the attitude of the modern state to the Jews. Rational and humanistic considerations contended with tradition, fears, and prejudices.

“Th e Pl agu e H a s Spr e a d in Ou r Cou ntry ”: Th e M ission of Elya k i m Zelig In contrast to the expectations of enlightened statesmen, the advocates of tolerance like Walpole, religious fanaticism struck once again with extreme cruelty about two thousand kilometers to the east, in the Ukrainian regions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. On the very day when the Parliament in London was submitting the Jew Bill to a third reading, in a municipal court in Kiev, thirteen Jews from the villages and towns in the area of Zytomierz were sentenced to violent execution. On the initiative of the assistant bishop, Kajetan Soltyk (1715–1788), they were found guilty of kidnapping and murdering a three-and-a-half-year-old boy, Stefan, during the Passover holiday for religious purposes. The victim was a member of the noble Polish Studzienski family. The prosecutors and judges believed they were taking God’s revenge and responding to the fury of the masses regarding the criminal deed of the Jews, who required Christian blood. Indeed, when the body was found in the forest near the village of Markowa Wolica and borne in a procession that passed the tavern run by Jacob Ben Reuben and his brother, Elijah , “the child suddenly began to bleed from his left ribs.” This miraculous testimony apparently incriminated the perpetrators. Two days later, at the end of May 1753, the verdict was carried out in Zytomierz. The imagination of the cruel judicial murderers knew no bounds. Five of the men accused of direct involvement in killing the Christian child, including Rabbi Shneur Ben Shlomo of Pawołocz and Jacob, the owner of the tavern, were sentenced to have their bound hands smeared with tar and burned. Also ordered were the excision of three strips of skin from their backs and the quartering of their bodies while they were still alive. After their death,

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their severed heads were placed on poles and their bodies were hanged. The three who were found guilty of assisting in the murder were sentenced to quartering and beheading, and three others, seeing the horrors of the cruel execution, agreed to convert to Christianity, so they were merely beheaded by sword without prior torture. Only two convicts, who baptized with their families and confessed to the crime, were pardoned.13 Cruel executions could also take place in Paris, as in the case of Damiens, who, as we have seen, was found guilty of attempting to assassinate the king in 1757. At least until protest and criticism arose in the second half of the century, torturing the bodies of those condemned to death, as Michel Foucault has shown, was central in the judicial and punitive system: “Broadly speaking, one might say that, in monarchical law, punishment is a ceremonial of sovereignty. . . . It uses the ritual marks of the vengeance that it applies to the body of the condemned man; and it deploys before the eyes of the spectators an effect of terror as intense as it is discontinuous.” The tortured body was an integral part of the theater of death; “the slowness of the process of torture and execution, its sudden dramatic moments, the cries and sufferings of the condemned man serve as an ultimate proof at the end of the judicial ritual.”14 The execution of the fourteen Jews in Zytomierz was yet another act of judicial murder, nourished by repeated blood libels, behind which stood senior Catholic priests. This was not a ceremony of sovereignty. Rather, it was religious revenge and the denunciation of an entire group. This tendency appeared to be increasing during the 1750s. The historian of Polish Jewry, Antony Polonsky, emphasized that even when Enlightenment views began to influence the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Catholic priest Gaudenty Pikulski (?–1763) could still state, following in the wake of Stefan Zuchowski (1666–1716), who laid the groundwork for the blood libels earlier in the century, that the Jews of Poland needed thirty gallons of Christian blood every year.15 An epistle from Pope Benedict XIV (1675–1758) to the heads of the Polish church in 1751 offered inspiration to the struggle against the Jews. This encyclical reprimanded the high aristocracy for enabling the Jews to establish themselves in commerce and for leasing villages, inns, and taverns, and it demanded their segregation from Christians and their social isolation. Gershon Hundert added that intentional policy motivated the initiators of the attack. In an age when Polish national identity began to be consolidated, they sought to increase the distance between Jews and Christians. Precisely in response to what appeared to be the Jews’ great success and dominance of urban life, the task of isolating them became extremely urgent.16 Until then, the trials for ritual murder in Poland had taken place far from the observing eye of European public opinion, but the incident in Zytomierz

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made its way out. Four months after the execution, it was covered in detail in the German press. A reporter for the Vossische Zeitung, which was published in Berlin, was horrified when he wrote, “A report from Danzig tells about the cruel execution of thirteen Jews, which was carried out in Poland,” and he expressed his disgust. “This is not the first time that they accuse the Jews of such insane cruelty and try to make this cruelty into one of the foundations of their religion.” Although this accusation had been refuted both by Christian scholars and by converts, as we have seen, the shame reawakened in midcentury. In the eyes of the German critic, this was a scandal imposed by the Catholics of Poland, and it marked the boundary of humanistic culture, which, in his opinion, divided Europe: “It must be remembered that this accusation is leveled against them only in those countries where the people support the greatest barbarity and the blindest belief, and are content with them both, and where they have long forgotten that Jews are also human beings.” In the mind of a man of the Age of Enlightenment, such blood libels were still only possible in Poland. Why should we not believe in the innocence of Jews who had fallen victim to a false accusation? “If it’s a disgrace that in our enlightened time witches are still burned, it’s no less of a disgrace that they tear Jews into four pieces because they supposedly made delicacies with the blood of a young Christian.”17 The voices of protest did not reach the ears of the Jews of Poland, and their reality did not change yet. For them, the “persecutions of Pawołocz,” which joined the earlier libels, were etched into communal memory and interpreted in religious terms. Once again, desperate prayers and cries to God were heard: “How long will You be silent and restrain Yourself for the blood of the innocent, blood of the pious and honest and righteous, in the city and the field, the voice of our murdered and strangled brothers’ blood cries out. . . . Quickly take the vengeance of the Lord.”18 The news traveled on the Jewish communications network quickly, and the pain strengthened the feeling of solidarity. In Altona, Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz eulogized: “And the beloved last ones whom the Lord burned, woe is me, precious children of Zion, how the hands of strangers governed them, the holy, pious rabbi of the holy community of Pawołocz, in Poland, in the district of Ostrog, with eight of his comrades . . . who in this summer for our many sins were killed to sanctify the Name of God, for these I weep, and my eyes flow with water.”19 Hasidic tales did not conceal that in the face of the “blood libel in the holy community of Pavlysh [Pawołocz],” even the Ba’al Shem Tov was helpless. Just as, six years earlier, he had asked in the upper worlds about the mystical meaning of the judicial murder in Zasław, Israel Ben Eli’ezer, the Kabbalist and expert in magic from Medzhybizh, was shocked and deeply upset when he

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was told about the horrible executions in Zytomierz. He had been convinced that no harm would come to the prisoners, and he even tried to calm the leaders of the Jews in Volhynia, who wanted to flee for their lives. When he heard about their fate, he felt that heaven had betrayed him. Depressed, weeping, and with a bitter soul, he summoned the “holy” spirits to him on Friday night and demanded revenge: “I decree that you go and take revenge on the enemy, the persecutor.” However, the answer was disappointing—“Since he is still living if you want to take revenge, you will have to become reincarnated”—and the price of vengeance was impossible. Frustrated, Israel Ben Eli’ezer asked, “Why did those in heaven mislead me and not reveal to me that you were destined to be martyrs? ” If he had intervened and applied his powers, they replied, “it could have caused great trouble, God forbid.” The Ba’al Shem Tov’s failure was perhaps explained away by the teller of the tale, but he could not conceal awareness of the inescapable disaster of these blood libels in Poland.20 From the summer to the autumn of 1756, the leaders of the Council of Four Lands met in Konstantynów, in the western Ukraine, between Miedzyboz and Zasław. News reached them about another blood libel that was being prosecuted nearby: “There was a great commotion because of the confusion the violent persecutions that arose in the holy community of Yampol, which was caught in an evil trap of confusion and a false accusation, and they took all the notables of the city in iron chains.”21 This news was threatening to the Jews of the region, and it was familiar and often repeated: the body of a drunk was found at Passover and aroused suspicion of ritual murder by stabbing. Although the investigation proved nothing, pressure was increased on the clergy not to relent against the suspects. Fifteen Jews from Jampol were imprisoned in order to extort a confession and prove their guilt. This time, however, a change took place when one of the prisoners, who managed to escape the prison in Kreminic, appeared before the Council of Four Lands and made the impassioned demand not to hold back anymore and to do something.22 The blood libel of Yampol was indeed a conspicuous milestone in blocking this wave of judicial persecution and murderous punishment in Poland, and an independent initiative was called for to make a change. Elyakim Ben Asher Zelig of Yampol, an eminent scholar whose ancestors had come to Poland after the expulsion from Spain, no longer relied on mystical forces to defend Jewish society, like the Ba’al Shem Tov, nor was he content with prayers. Rather, he enlisted the umbrella organization of the communities in an effort at intercession that would directly address the top leaders of the Catholic Church.23 Especially grave issues lay on the table of the council. It was called on to cover its deficit by imposing a special tax to repay debts and to deal with the

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unresolved conflict between Emden and Eybeschütz, which was exacerbated by the great threat of a new outbreak of radical Sabbateanism—and all of this was without the knowledge that a plan was being formulated in Warsaw to weaken Jewish autonomy and completely disband the umbrella organization. Elyakim Zelig appeared in this tense atmosphere and reported on the horrors of the blood libel in Yampol, and he did not allow the leaders of Poland to ignore them. He presented the deep distress of the Jews of Poland, who were victims of a heightening trend; until now, “it was not frequent, but only from time to time, let’s say once in fifty years [but] for several years now the plague has spread in our country, year after year, whenever a body is found lying somewhere or floats up on the surface of the water . . . they condemn our brethren, the children of Israel, to torture them first and then to destroy them.” As a self-appointed community leader, he said, seeing that Polish Jewry was then “the place of most of the remnant of Israel in exile,” this violent attack ought to concern the entire people. He recalled the words he had spoken to the council and wished to break the chain of libels and assume responsibility. “I said to myself, I will go [to the Council of Four Lands] with a thunderous voice to find some help and remedy for our blows, or whether we are doomed to perish, God forbid.” Elyakim Zelig’s emotional outburst touched the hearts of the leaders of Polish Jewry, and they accepted his proposal “to go to the great city of Rome and ask of the chief priest, the mighty king, the minister of grace, his Highness the Pope, and the other Christian sages who sit in law and judgment,” asking them to instruct the senior clergy in Poland that the blood libel is a falsehood and forbidden. Since he was an escaped prisoner with an ardent urge to do something, it was also agreed that he should be the emissary: “Everyone set their eyes upon me, for the duty grew strong within me to participate in the sorrow of the Jews, since a miracle had happened for me.”24 Elyakim remained in Rome for almost four years and stubbornly pursued his mission. “Every day it was necessary to be diligent and knock on the doors of the great ministers of Rome,” he recounted, to pay large sums of money to senior clergymen to give him access to the decision makers in the heart of the Catholic establishment. Meanwhile, he was received as an honored guest as a scholar and emissary of the Council of Four Lands, and he became involved in the life of the rabbinical elite of Italy. At the end of the winter of 1758, it was decided in Rome to open an investigation to discover the facts behind Zelig’s request in the name of Polish Jewry.25 Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganeli (1705–1774) was asked by the pope to head a special commission, which was to submit conclusions and proposals. The representative of the Church in Warsaw, the nuncio Antonio Eugenio Visconti

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(1713–1788), was asked to interrogate Christians and Jews who had been involved in the recent incidents in Zytomierz and Yampol. For example, Soltyk was now required to present a full report of his actions and to justify the conviction of the Jews in the plot that he had hatched five years earlier. Elyakim Zelig and his friends in Rome saw this as a successful breakthrough, and they awaited the outcome with bated breath. About a week after this instruction was issued, Zelig wrote optimistically: “Thank God this matter is close to conclusion and judgment most favorable to us will be passed . . . they wrote to the nuncio from here who lives in the country of Poland in the city of the kingdom, Warsaw, to give an opinion to be seen by the whole people of Poland, and I must sit here until the time comes for his word.”26 Another year passed before Elyakim Zelig could return from Rome to Poland as a victor whose mission had been crowned with success. The document that Ganganeli submitted on December 24, 1759, to the new pope, Clement XIII, was exceptional in the Church’s self-criticism and rejection of the persecution of the Jews of Poland. Ganganeli was a Franciscan, who ten years later became Pope Clement XIV. He took the task assigned to him very seriously, and, in light of the reports he received from Warsaw, he submitted a report from Catholic Rome that voiced the opinions of the humanists of eighteenth-century Europe. Nothing in Ganganeli’s words cast doubt on his commitment to Christianity and the Church, nor did it abandon expectation of the conversion of the Jews. But in the end, it was a protest against the injustice done to the Jews of Poland. Ganganeli’s report confirmed the arguments made by Elyakim Zelig, and, in the name of judicial justice and the pursuit of truth, it laid bare the injustice done to the accused in the episodes of Zasław and Yampol. Like a humanistic warrior of the Enlightenment, he stated that vicious hatred underlaid the persecution of the Jews and that it was only masquerading behind the robe of religious zeal. In his opinion, this was how the Christians had been treated as a persecuted minority. It was so difficult, he wrote, to uproot prejudices planted deeply in various nations, and their influence could be murderous. He suspected that the Polish priests had tried to conceal crimes and obscure the truth. The accusations they had made against the Jews had not been proven in any instance. The testimony of converts about the use of blood was unreliable and inadmissible. He said he blushed in shame at the thought that they had accused the Jews of murder, and he was mortified when he read the judicial proofs that in fact a Christian father had tormented his daughter and tried to kill her, yet the person who was found guilty in the case was a Jew. There was no basis to the claim that the Jewish religion required Christian blood, and the pope recommended efforts to protect the miserable Jews of Poland, whose persecution was a disgrace to Christianity.27

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Elyakim Zelig’s mission was accomplished. The pope ratified Ganganeli’s report on January 10, 1760, and now it was to be hoped that the policy of the Church would come to the attention of the senior clergy and heads of state in Poland. He left Rome, and on his long trip home, he went through the communities of southern France to avoid combat zones (“Because all the roads are dangerous and ruined with troops”); he wished to protect himself from personal attack. Everyone involved in the incident knew very well that his role had been decisive, and Ganganeli even mentioned him several times in his opinion. A cardinal in Rome provided him with a letter of protection addressed to the representative of the Church, Visconti, warning him not to harm Elyakim. Clement XIII was already considering the means to prevent further blood libels (“for the people believe in this lie as if [the Jews] had the custom of putting human blood in the dough of their matsot”), and meanwhile he ordered Elyakim Zelig “not to suffer any intimidation or harassment from anyone upon returning to his homeland, especially from those whom his highness [the pope] could believe that they had a bad opinion of him for presenting his request to the Holy See.”28 Seeing the danger posed to him from the Polish priests, whom he had circumvented by his intercession in Rome and whom he had derogated in his complaints, Elyakim Zelig, a relatively anonymous Jew who had escaped from prison in Yampol by the skin of his teeth and taken an ambitious mission upon himself, received a personal and unusual certificate of immunity from the leader of the Church. Even after Elyakim Zelig returned to Poland, his intercession had not been completed. He argued that he had been an emissary of the community. Hence, the responsibility to defray his many expenses and repay the loans he had received from wealthy Jews in Italy was incumbent upon the Council of Four Lands. At first, the leaders of the council sought to evade their responsibility by claiming that Elyakim Zelig had acted on his own, that his mission had not been authorized, and that “he had no permission to spend money in Italy at the expense of Polish Jewry.” However, they relented in the end, and only the imposition of a special tax on every Jewish family enabled them to pay Elyakim Zelig a part of the bill he had submitted.29 The accusations of ritual murder did not cease. Until explicit instructions arrived from Rome, a number of blood libels broke out even in the years that Zelig was in Italy. Seven Jews were found guilty of spilling the blood of a Christian child in Przemysl (May 14, 1759), and in Krastnystaw, near Lublin, three members of the Wojslawice community were executed in the summer of 1761 for the ritual murder of a boy. Under severe torture, they confessed to other acts of murder and were sentenced to death by drawing and quartering. Rabbi

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Hirsh Josepovitz committed suicide in prison, and others converted so they would be executed only by decapitation with a sword. The desecration of his body, which was completely crushed, was vengeful: “His body was tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through the city streets and burned to ashes with fire and the ashes were scattered to the winds by a large cannon.”30 The new instructions only reached the Polish leaders three years after Pope Clement XIII approved Ganganeli’s report. The papal nuncio in Warsaw, Visconti, announced to the highest minister in the kingdom, Heinrich von Brühl (1700–1763), that henceforth excellent proofs must be presented to convict a Jew, since the investigation had shown that “there is no proven evidence or clear example that had the power to corroborate suspicion or prove the accusation of this grave crime [ritual murder and the use of Christian blood], which was leveled against them, and which would have the power to condemn them in a trial.” Shortly afterward, Augustus III (1696–1763), the king of Poland, joined in condemnation of blood libels and confirmed his commitment to the declaration of the rights of the Jews of Poland, issued in the late sixteenth century. In a further step of personal initiative, Meir Ben Yoel of Dubno, who was the chief lay leader of the Council of Four Lands, succeeded in having Elyakim Zelig’s letter of protection and the letter to Brühl ratified as official documents signed with the seal of the monarchy and registered in the king’s offices. In that year, Meir Ben Yoel also published these documents in a special booklet in Polish and Latin.31 Elyakim Zelig’s intercession and the efforts of the Council of Four Lands were crowned with success, documented, and published. This was not the last word, and several blood libels also arose in the following two decades. However, 1763, also the last year of the Seven Years’ War, marked the blocking of the increasingly radical trend that Elyakim Zelig feared so much. At the turn of the century, about forty years later, a Lithuanian preacher could say that the blood libels belonged to “a previous age.”32

Note s 1. Israel Solomons, “Satirical and Political Prints on the Jews’ Naturalization Bill, 1753,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 6–7 (1908–1914): 205–233. 2. See Thomas W. Perry, Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Politics in EighteenthCentury England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); David Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 240–255; Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830: Tradition and

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Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 24–25, 59–64, 89–101; Albert M. Hyamson, “The Jew Bill of 1753,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 6–7 (1908–1914): 156–188; Isaiah Shachar, “The Emergence of the Modern Pictorial Stereotype of the Jews in England,” in Studies in the Cultural Life of the Jews in England, ed. Dov Noy and Issachar Ben-Ami (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 331–365; Dana Rabin, “The Jew Bill of 1753: Masculinity, Virility, and the Nation,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 2 (2006): 157–171. 3. Joseph Salvador to the Duke of Newcastle, London, January 14, 1753, in Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), 129–130. 4. H.aim Yosef David Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov hashalem, ed. Aron Freimann (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1934), 32. 5. Raphael Mahler, Jewish Emancipation: A Selection of Documents (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1941), 15–17. 6. Perry, Public Opinion, 58. 7. The cartoon and the quotations from the pamphlets come from A Collection of the Best Pieces in Prose and Verse Against the Naturalization of the Jews (London: Mary Cooper, 1753); Solomons, “Satirical and Political Prints on the Jews’ Naturalization Bill, 1753,” 205–233; Hyamson, “The Jew Bill of 1753,” 167–168; Perry, Public Opinion, 75–76, 97, 101, 194–199; Shachar, “The Emergence of the Modern Pictorial Stereotype of the Jews in England,” 331–365. 8. See Mark Hallet and Christine Riding, eds., Hogarth (London: Tate, 2007), 228–231 (An Election Entertainment); David Bindman, David Ekserdjian, and Will Palin, eds., Hogarth’s Election Entertainment (London: An Apollo Magazine Publication, 2001). 9. Josiah Tucker, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Naturalizations (London: Printed for Thomas Trye, 1753), 11–15; Tucker, A Second Letter to a Friend Concerning Naturalizations (London: Printed for Thomas Trye, 1753), 3, 10. 10. Samson Gideon to the Wardens of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, September 5, 1753, in Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917), 131–132. 11. See Perry, Public Opinion, 150–161. 12. See Perry, Ibid., 159; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 240. 13. On the blood libels of Zytomierz, the trial, and the verdict in their broad context, see H.aim Bar-Dayan (Borodinski), “Gezerat pavolotz umishpat zhitomir,” in Eder hayaqar, articles on literature and scholarship dedicated to S. A. Horodezky on his seventy-fifth birthday (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1947), 131–144; Meir Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafrankit, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1934), 100–106; Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” Polin 10 (1997): 132–133; Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), ch. 4; Magda

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Teter, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020). 14. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment, the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 45, 130, respectively. 15. Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Littman Library, 2010), 26. 16. Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), ch. 3; Magda Teter, “The Legend of Ger Zedek of Wilno as Polemic and Reassurance,” AJS Review 29, no. 2 (2005): 247–248; Bar-Dayan (Borodinski), “Gezerat pavolotz umishpat Zhitomir,” 102. 17. Vossische Zeitung, 122, Berlin 1753; Oesterreichische Wochenschrift 30, no. 49 (December 5, 1913), 892. 18. Bar-Dayan (Borodinsky), “Gezerat pavolots umishpat Zhitomir,” 144 (“’Al haharugim haqedoshim deq”q pavlotsh veq”q yadraqov bishnat taf-quf-yod-gimel”). See Ain naya historiesh bilbul lid, velkhish geshehen for etlikhe yor in polin, Frankfurt on the Oder, 1768. 19. Jonathan Eybeschütz, Sefer qeshet yehonatan, Altona 1784, fol. 1a. 20. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Besht], The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 161–163. 21. Emden, Sefer shimush, fol. 2b; Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 416–417. 22. Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafrankit, 105–106; Pinqas va’ad arba artsot, 418; Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland,” 133; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 103–104. 23. Yitsh.aq Ber Levinsohn, one of the first Maskilim in the Ukraine in the nineteenth century, wrote about Elyakim Zelig, “my grandfather’s uncle,” who was “a fine Torah scholar and a great sage, and a courageous man,” in Beit yehuda (Warsaw: Dov Ber Nathansohn, 1878), 117. 24. The documents about Elyakim Zelig’s mission are found in Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 341–525, I, for the years 5516–5563. The story, as written by Elyakim Zelig himself in the letter to the heads of the community of Cassali (Elul 1758), ibid., 426–428; Yisrael Bartal, “Yehudim polanim bedrom ma’arav eiropa beemtsa’ hameah ha-18,” in Temurot bahistoria hayehudit hah. adasha: qovets mamarim shai leshmuel ettinger, ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), 418–437 (appendices 3–4). See Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafrankit, 127–133; Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland,” 133–134. 25. From the letter of Cardinal Corsini to the nuncio Visconti (February 9, 1760), Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 433. 26. Letter from Elyakim Zelig to Shmuel Galiko (Nissan 6, 5518), Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 424.

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27. Cecil Roth, ed., The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew: The Report by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV) (London: The Woburn Press, 1934). 28. Letter from Cardinal Corsini to the nuncio Visconti (February 9, 1760), Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 433. 29. Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 433–434 (deliberations at the meeting of the council in Warsaw, 1761). 30. The description according to Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolichow in A. Y. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha; meh. qarim betoldot galitsia bameah hashmone-‘esre (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1956), 267–269. See Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafrankit, 285–288; Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland,” 134–136. 31. The documents are found in Documenta Judaeos in Polonia concernentia, published by Meir Ben Yoel of Dubn0 and republished with Hebrew translation by his descendant, RIBAL (Yitsh.aq Ber Levinsohn), Efes damim (Warsaw: Dov Ber Nathansohn, 1894), 5–25, 90–94 (special appendix). See Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafrankit, 282–283; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 124–125. 32. Hillel Ben Zeev Wolf of Kovna in his book, Hillel ben shah.ar (Warsaw: Viktor Dambrowski, 1804), fol. 16a, cited by Hundert in Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, 73.

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BLOOD FOR BLOOD The Frankist Scandal and the Subversiveness of Religious Awakening

In one of the letters that Elyakim Zelig sent from Rome, he leveled vehement criticism against the spread of the use of amulets for magical protection. He was particularly angry at the Sabbatean amulets that were circulated by “evil heretics who sin in their souls, a sect of infidels who believe in the false faith in may-his-name-be-blotted-out, blast his spirit and soul, and they write amulets with his impure name and mix it in with holy names in inverted language.”1 This was a reminder that, in parallel with the sense of emergency aroused by the wave of blood libels, the dispute over the amulets continued to roil. While Zelig was in Italy as the representative of the Jews of Poland before the senior officials of the Catholic Church, the Frankist sect came to light. In the eyes of the people of the time, who, with great excitement, followed the exposure and denunciation of Sabbateans in Podolia and the public scandals that ensued between 1756 and 1760, until about three thousand of them collectively converted to Christianity, this was an episode of great importance. A radical religious group that made sins into commandments and a charismatic religious leader who promised freedom from prohibitions and gathered obedient “brothers and sisters” around him threatened traditional values and norms from within and endangered the welfare of the Jews with vengeance.2

A Je w ish Ci v i l Wa r in Pol a n d This news spread throughout Europe, and the conversion attracted particular attention. Far away in London, in 1759, an anonymous pamphlet, Friendly Address to the Jews, reported that the author had read in a newspaper that several thousand Jews in Poland and Hungary wished to accept the Catholic religion.

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Could it be that the descendants of Abraham were devoting themselves to the worship of wood and stones and turning their back on God? If they had begun to think that Christianity was the truth and the Messiah had already come, why not adopt the true, Protestant religion? According to calculations of the end of days, based on the Book of Daniel, Jerusalem would be rebuilt in 1816, and the Jews would return to their land in advance of the second coming of the Messiah.3 While these were distant theological hopes that reinforced missionary expectations, in Poland itself, the Frankists were an immediate danger, because they exacerbated the blood libels precisely at a time when the leaders of the Council of Four Lands were trying to put an end to them. Representatives of the persecuted sect, who were already on the verge of conversion, sought to take revenge on their community of origin by confirming—ostensibly on the basis of reliable inside information—the Jews’ religious requirement of Christian blood. A blood libel was prosecuted in Wislawicz in 1761, culminating in judicial murder, apparently because the Frankists informed against them. Dov Ber Birkenthal reported: “The members of the sect stood and took a gentile child from the Christians and kept him hidden in a cellar for four weeks, saying that the Jews would give them bribes and money. When they saw there was no guarantee for presents from the Jews, they took the aforementioned child and slaughtered him and stabbed him.”4 The level of suspicion against clandestine Sabbateans was very high in any event, as shown by the intensity of feelings that attended the episode of the amulets. Now, however, true panic seized the leaders of the community and the religious elite. Lay leaders and rabbis between Kamieniec and Lwow, the heads of the Council of Four Lands and the intercessors in its name, those who took testimony from the rabbinical court of Satanow, and the authors of the writ of excommunication expelling the Frankists from Jewish society all sought a solution that would eliminate the threat of Sabbateanism once and for all. Exposure of the libertine life led by the men and women who were members of the sect, Jacob Frank’s image as a “sorcerer,” the coarse and petty provocations of those who defined themselves as “counter-Talmudists,” the deep involvement of senior Catholic clergy and forced religious disputes, as well as the burning of the Talmud ordered by the severe sentence of a court in Kamieniec in 1757, all exacerbated local concern, which only died down after the conversion ceremonies. While the Council of Four Lands was awaiting the outcome of the intercession in Rome, central rabbis, especially Rabbi H.aim Cohen Rapaport (1699–1771) of Lwow, had to cope, against their will, with the Frankists, orally and in writing. In this time of emergency, the council sought assistance from the two rivals, Jonathan Eybeschütz and Jacob Emden in Altona. In a German

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memorandum, Eybeschütz attacked those “deniers of God” who had been ostracized from every Jewish community and now were distorting Judaism with false accusations to defame the Jews in the eyes of the Christians. To bolster his position he enlisted two Hebraists from the University of Halle.5 His rival, Emden, followed the distant events in Poland with bated breath. Through letters that reported the progress of the episode in detail and through an agent of the council, Baruch Meeretz Yavan, who, as noted, was later to become his in-law, served as an expert advisor. Emden’s many writings enable one to hear his clear voice and especially the fears of an eighteenth-century Jew, who, at various crossroads in his life, expressed the meaning he attributed to his private life and to his public religious mission. He was also one of the few who were aware of historical changes as they were occurring. In the pamphlet Resen mat’e (“a bridle that causes to err,” from Isa. 30:28, meaning being led on the wrong path), he presented the scandal of the Frankists as a historical event of universal significance, transcending the confines of the Jewish people. However, beyond that, he saw it as a turning point containing an exceptional opportunity for causing a reversal in the tense relations between Jews and Christians. In his opinion, the natural disasters that struck Europe, from the earthquake in Lisbon to the especially severe winter, were also a sign from heaven of the fateful and catastrophic meaning of the outbreak of Sabbateanism: “Who knows whether they were the cause last year (when these demons began to come out from the deep abyss and awaken in public) and this year (when they deceived the nations) of so many earthquakes, the shaking of the earth and the thunder of the sea, truly from one end of the world to the other, and specifically the dreadful storms that inundated [the land] with a flood.” Not even the timing of the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War was a coincidence. It merely confirmed in his view the feeling of ferment and extreme change, considering “the controversy of wars and many commotions among the nations of the lands, as, if perish the thought, the world were ending.”6 It is difficult to imagine that Emden believed that his words would reverberate widely and be heard by the leaders of the monotheistic religions, but Resen mat’e was written as a universal, bold appeal. The exposure of Sabbatean radicalism required the three religions to take stock: “You Jews, Christians, and Ishmaelites, the three main nations, who built their fortresses on the basis of the Torah of Moses our Teacher, may he rest in peace, and spread out into the world, open your eyes! Will you now tremble and be afraid [cf. Isa. 8:44]? I even call to idolworshippers living in remote countries, look and see whether there is any pain like our pain. . . . Whether there is a worse sect and a more wicked band and society than this cursed society, of Shabbetai Zevi, may the name of the wicked rot.”

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The Sabbateans violated all the accepted norms of human society and also challenged Christians and Muslims, because they had invented a new religion. This “fictional faith that has newly emerged” endangered existing order and its stability. Religious tolerance stopped there. “Even in countries that are free for all old religions as in the land of Ishmael and in Holland and England, it is not permitted to innovate a new religion.” Under these circumstances, the rabbi from Altona believed he could expect severe punishment, “and it is very likely they will condemn them to be burned by order of the pope in Rome.”7 At this point in time, when the common interest linking all the religions in the face of this challenge became clear, in Emden’s opinion it was possible to formulate a doctrine of toleration that would be acceptable to all the believers in God. Using sources from the New Testament, he presented the original Christianity of Jesus and his disciples as an ethical teaching that also respected the Jews and even taught “the duty of constantly observing the Torah,” for “no Jew is permitted to leave his religion.” Learned people had always known this, but others had deviated from the path: “The masses . . . are seduced by the words of priests poor in knowledge, during the time when they sank into alien opinion, because they did not understand the counsel of their ancients.” This idea was daring, even subversive, and the residue of his bitter hostility toward Eybeschütz also seeped into it. Now we can purify the two religions in a process of reform, he asserted, because “there are also found among us the Israelites insane scholars who do not know their right from their left in the written and oral Torah.” Using almost the same words as those who advocated granting citizenship to the Jews, the believers in common humanity, Emden declared: “Oh, heavens, are we not brothers? For a single God created us, and why should we be persecuted because we cling to the commandments of our God?” As for tolerance, the Jews especially stand out in it, for “we ask for the well-being of the entire world, and we especially pray for peace of these nations, among whom we dwell.” As though he were not a rabbi who keep the gates of religion against every threat, but rather a warrior of the Enlightenment who rejects religious fanaticism, Emden believed that, in order for this dramatic change to take place in the relations between Jews and Christians, together they had to overcome barbaric clergymen and the final bastion of fanaticism remaining in the world. Only in Poland did blood libels take place like the recent one in Yampol, “but how long will this injustice remain only in the hands of the priests of the country of Poland, a dark land of bloodthirsty people like wolves who often spill the blood of innocent and miserable people?” Except for Poland, all the countries of the world had already rid themselves of these beliefs: “Not thus are those who dwell in the lands of Ashkenaz [Germany], England, France, and the Ottoman

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Empire, Holland, Italy, Denmark, and all those around them, where Jews live, this is unknown and it would not come to mind, needless to say in all the states of Ishmael . . . in all parts of the world, Asia, Africa, Europe. . . . Such knavery is neither seen nor heard in any nation, for most of them are wise and there are good and honest scholars among them who love the Jews.” The humanistic and religious test of the nations of the world was their attitude toward the Jews, in midcentury, according to Emden’s judgment; only “Poland, the land of darkness,” failed it.8 On the basis of this interpretation and belief that the Sabbatean challenge, in its radical form as the Frankist cult, lurked on the threshold of Christian Europe and especially of Poland, Emden suggested a plan of action to the Council of Four Lands. He ruled that there was no prohibition against informing to the government against the Frankists so they would be burned at the stake, and he urged them to appeal to “the vigilant and intelligent rulers and bishops, who were prominent in the kingdom of Poland, to torment the aforementioned foolish and deviant heretics.” Jacob Frank remained a mysterious figure in the eyes of his contemporaries. From the little that was reported in testimony and rumors, he appears to have been the leader of a cult that challenged Judaism from within. It is no wonder that Emden, whose senses were sharp in any event, attributed such great importance to Frank and his followers, seeing him as a threat to the integrity of the society and culture. The band that idolized Frank was seen as wild outlaws, and he himself, as Gershom Scholem portrayed him—“a man with a strong and tyrannical soul who nevertheless lived entirely in the mythological world”— emphasized the nihilistic traits of his personality and his effort to sanctify sin. Jacob Frank declared himself to be the second Jacob of the Bible, but in the end he would lead his followers to Esau, to Edom, to Christianity, and to life free of all law.9 Many of the sources about him are hostile and nourished by rumors and legends. For example, Birkenthal belittled him by writing, “Many people say his father was a distiller of brandy, and that he was a behelfer [an apprentice],” and he emphasized that he had learned Sabbateanism in the Balkans from the sect of the Dönmeh, who had converted to Islam. For his part, Jacob Emden learned from documents that had come to him from Poland “that he was at first a mindless boy, ignorant, a great, base know-nothing, and very ugly, so that he did not have the figure of a man only his face was like the face of a demon, and he was unable to speak or use language at all.” As a sorcerer and imposter, “he could show a false image to a person whose ancestors had died and bring him the figure of the deceased father.” He was from Bucharest; there, he was an ignorant, low-status servant, but when he arrived in Salonika, he associated with the Sabbateans and became a Kabbalist with visions and

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ecstatic experiences, “and an evil spirit possessed him immediately one night while he was staying with them, and he fell onto the earth and he would fall to the ground [and] reveal hidden secrets and teachings.”10 He was most probably born in Korolowka in Podolia in 1726 as Ya’aqov Ben Leib Buchbinder, but he grew up with his parents in the Ottoman Empire, in Czernowicz and Bucharest, among other places. He married a woman named Hannah in Nikopol in 1752. Their only daughter, Chava (1753–1816) succeeded her father as the leader of the sect after her father’s death. In the early 1750s, Frank was inducted in the secret Sabbatean faith in Salonika and exposed to the radical doctrine that revoked all the commandments and prohibitions. When he returned to Poland in late 1755 and joined the Sabbateans, who became his disciples, the spark was lit that exploded the affair. “When I was in Salonika for the first time, once a voice woke me at midnight and spoke to me in an astonished tone, saying: ‘Ya’aqov, go out of the city to the seaport and do a certain deed there.’” This is the beginning of the first part of The Words of the Lord, which tells about his mysterious mission and its prophetical source in Frank’s own voice. This is an exceptional autobiography, composed of more than two thousand quotations recorded by his followers at a later time and preserved in a Polish manuscript. Frank did not write his own life story. The memories, dreams, sayings, and instructions contained in The Words of the Lord do not fit together into an ordered life story. However, they still are a document that expresses Frank’s self and provides a glimpse into his world, as he himself wished to depict it in the first person. Indeed, the eighteenth century was populated by many autonomous and ambitious individuals who sought to promote human happiness, but Frank brought the desire for freedom and the consciousness of the power that an individual can attain to a level where human values are trampled and freedom is restricted by the demand for obedience.11 The story of his youth is a series of defiant acts and abuse, which he sought to use to impress his band of followers and bolster his authority. He boasted that in Czerniowce, he grabbed the Four Species used on Succoth from the beadle and forced Muslims to wave them, on threat of a beating. In Śniatyn, he led a violent gang of youths: “We would attack travelers, put sand in their eyes to blind them and take everything they had.” He was a particularly sturdy fellow and intimidated everyone, and his sexual prowess was unlimited: “In my youth my member was particularly lively. . . . When I was with girls I had to tie it, because otherwise it would have torn my clothes.” At the same time, he presented himself as a visionary with a religious mission conferred upon him by heaven: “When I was told to go to Poland, I answered: ‘Why me? There are

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many wise men. Why not send them?’ ‘No, you yourself must go,’ was the answer ‘because God Himself chose you.’” However, his mission was destructive, in violation of every law. He urged his followers to join him in total obedience on a journey to “life,” “because all the laws and prayers are only on the side of death.” The contempt for religion in his youthful acts was expanded into a doctrine reverberating with his radical and anarchistic call for liberation: “I will crush all the laws.”12 The autonomy that Frank accorded to himself was absolute and displayed an orderly view of the world. Not even God was a standard requiring proper behavior: “Man does not have to find favor with God. The proof of that is Noah, of whom it is written that he found favor in the eyes of God, and look what happened to him in the end.”13 In an era of masked adventurers, the world he built was characterized for him and for the his followers by many masquerades and double identities. The Polish Jew named Buchbinder became Frank, a term used in the Christian world for a Sephardic or Turkish Jew, and in the Muslim world it designated a European. Like Geldern, he wore Oriental garb and a turban. He converted both to Islam and to Christianity, and he compared himself to both Jacob and Esau. He practiced exceptional equality among the brothers and sisters in his sect and empowered the women, and he also appointed a female bodyguard in an act that blurred gender boundaries. Birkenthal told that when he reached Poland, he was accompanied by “a girl from Lwow dressed in a man’s robes like a boy.”14 About a month after the earthquake in Lisbon, on December 5, 1755, Jacob Frank, at the age of twenty-seven, crossed the Dniester and shocked the communities of Podolia in Poland. Within a short time, he was recognized as the leader of a group, which was apparently formed by Sabbatean emissary Judah Leib Krysa. Before two months had passed, a scandal was proclaimed when a mysterious religious ceremony was held in Lanckorona. According to eyewitnesses “who looked through the cracks in the wall, they saw naked men and women dancing with each other and singing loudly. . . . And they praised the name of Shabbetai Zevi and Berechia [Russo, 1695–1740], may the names of the wicked rot, and this was done on the night of January 27 [1756].”15 Some of the participants, the sons and daughters of the Shorr, Segal, and Shabtai families, were arrested, while Frank himself returned to Turkey and even converted to Islam. In the inquiry of the rabbinical court of Satanow, confessions of severe transgressions were heard, and the leaders of the community once again proclaimed an emergency. The behavior was libertine in respect to sexual prohibitions and kashrut. For example, a certain Yosef, who repented, confessed that he had had intercourse with his sister-in-law, that his wife had fornicated, and that he had eaten leavened food

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on Passover, violated the Sabbath, and eaten on fast days, because the Sabbatean teachings taught him that “he who observes and fasts on the ninth of Av has no greater sin than that, for it injures Shabbetai Zevi.”16 The central place given to women in the Frankist band emerges in the testimony about the Sabbatean prophetess, Chaya Shorr of Rohatyn, the wife of Tsevi Hirsh Shabbtai. She was also apparently the woman around whom the believers danced in Lanckorona. Shmuel Ben Shlomo told “how he [Frank] wanted to kiss Chaya, the wife of Rabbi Hirsh Shabbtai, she did not want to let him kiss her. He went to her husband Hirsh, [who] gave him permission to fornicate with her, even though she did not want to. He went to her husband, cast suspicion on her that she was not a believer, she took a knife, took fat [forbidden according to kashrut], and ate it.” The high status of Chaya Shorr enabled her to hold induction ceremonies for those who wished to join and had to prove themselves by committing a transgression. Jacob Emden reported that she acquired her status as a prophetess through ecstatic behavior similar to that of Frank himself, accompanied by epileptic convulsions: “That cursed woman made a prophetess of herself . . . falling on the ground as though in a fit, like someone possessed by a demon, and while she was in the fit she recited some passages from the Zohar by heart.”17 After the exposure of Lanckorona , there was an especially pressing need to redefine the boundaries of Jewish society versus the movement of religious awakening that challenged it. Excommunication was proclaimed at a hurried meeting of the rabbis of the community of Brody (June 24, 1756), and it was adopted by the leaders of the Council of Four Lands, who assembled in Constantinow, leaving no room for doubt, although that assembly also had to cope with the emergency aroused by the blood libels and accusations of ritual murder. The exclusion of “every one of the believers in Shabbetai Zevi,” especially the libertines and heretics “who overturn the words of the living God,” was absolute. The excommunication of Brody forbade all social and business contact with them, marriage, eating food they prepared, and the study of their books. It was not allowed to appoint any of them as a prayer leader, a teacher, a scribe, a slaughterer, or a rabbi. Moreover, “it proclaimed that their wives and daughters were whores . . . , and not even after ten generations were they to be accepted in the community of the Lord.” Since such extreme heresy was nourished by the Kabbalah and by Christian circles and even known as Zoharists, the writ of excommunication concluded with a restriction of access: “They also decreed not to study the Zohar or any books of Kabbalah, either in print or in manuscript, before the age of thirty years and even after forty . . . and it was not permitted except to someone whose belly was full of the Talmud and posqim [Halakhic rulings].”18

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In the three following years, the intervention of Polish priests diverted the treatment of the episode from the rabbis and the institutions of self-rule and turned it into a religious confrontation that also reverberated in the Christian world. At the end of June 1757, the bishop of Kamieniec Podolski, Mikola Dembowski (1693–1757), summoned the Frankists and rabbinical Jews of the region to a public theological dispute. The principal speakers for the former were Leib Krysa and Shlomo Shorr, the brother of the Sabbatean prophetess Chaya Shorr, along with scholars like Rabbi Wolf Ben Shalom, who advanced theological arguments, some of which were close to Christianity—for example, the belief in three aspects of the divinity and that Jerusalem would not be rebuilt, and that God should appeare in human form. The direct attack was leveled against the Talmud and purportedly contained falsehoods that contradicted the Torah, such as “an idolator who studies Torah must be executed.” The twenty-six rabbis who were forced to take part in the dispute avoided criticism of Christianity, for they insisted there was nothing against Christians in the Talmud and that the term for idolators referred only to pagans. Moreover, “we pray for the peace, happiness, and government of our lords.” Dembowski had no doubt that the Frankists had proven their “antiTalmudistic” claims, and he celebrated their victory—and, in fact, the victory of Christianity—in October 1757 by burning the Talmud in the central square of Kamieniec. This was a humiliating occasion for the Jews who were forced to attend. The hangman placed the twelve volumes of the Talmud in a sack and tied it to the tail of a horse. In front of the town hall, “there was a great fire that they lit for this, and the hangman took the books out of the sack, one by one, opened them in front of the people, and threw the books into the f laming fire one by one, and the rabbis who had been sent and all the Jews who accompanied them broke out in great weeping.” Not surprisingly, Dembowski’s sudden death, three weeks after he ordered the burning of the Talmud, appeared to be revenge from heaven. In a single moment, the Frankists were defeated and became vulnerable, and they suffered from attacks in the street. Leib Krysa, for example, was nearly beaten to death. The members of the cult f led to Turkey, joined their leader, Frank, and converted to Islam. In the winter of 1757, it appeared that they no longer posed any danger.19 Nevertheless, the Frankists, who had been humiliated, sought to take revenge against their persecutors, and the priests also felt that the victory of Christianity was not yet complete. Provided with a letter of protection from the king, Frank and his followers returned to Poland at the end of 1758, and they prepared for a second theological dispute in Lwow as well as conversion

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to Christianity. Their surprising appeal to Archbishop Aleksander Łubieński (1703–1763) , to be accepted by the Church (February 2, 1759), was received with excitement, and news of the imminent conversion of thousands of Jews was also spread from Poland by the papal nuncio in Warsaw. At first they requested that even after their conversion to Christianity, they could retain certain conspicuous Jewish characteristics; they wanted to keep their beards and earlocks, they did not want to have to eat pork, they wanted to be able to observe Saturday as a day of rest along with Sunday, and mainly they wished not to break up the cult and to marry only within it. To this end, they also hoped that the Polish authorities would allow them to establish a separate Frankist settlement in the Lwow region, which would stand in the middle ground as the community of the true children of Israel, between Judaism and Christianity. Their sectarian consciousness strengthened the suspicion that they actually intended to establish a new religion.20 When it became clear that those conditions would not be accepted, and after Frank had instructed his followers to prepare to set out on the path to “Edom,” only revenge remained. Unlike what happened in Kamieniec, in Lwow, the Frankists presented a decidedly Christian theology. The prophecies for the coming of the Messiah had been fulfilled, he had garbed himself in a human body to save mankind, and only baptism opened the gate to faith in the messianic king. In this context, the exceptional claim was made that the Jews truly murdered Christians for ritual purposes. Birkenthal, who was an active participant in the Lwow dispute from July through September in 1759 as the right-hand man of Rabbi Rapaport and a translator into Polish, described the long hours during which he tried to the best of his ability to refute the evidence of blood libels. He described the tense situation in the cathedral of Lwow and emphasized the presence of the leader, who had hitherto been absent from the confrontations and kept silent: “With him were sixty chosen men of theirs, all of them scholars and prepared to convert to the Christian religion, and they all stood with their heads bare, and we Jews all covered our heads with hats.” The seventh claim of the Frankists was extremely sensitive: “Leib Krysa, the son of Neta, from the holy community of Nadwórna, spoke in Hebrew, the holy tongue, saying the following: ‘It is clarified in the Talmud that it is a commandment for every son of Israel who believes in the Talmud to slaughter the children of Christians and remove their blood and to eat it in the matzah on the first night of the Passover holiday.’” This might have been dictated by the priests who organized the dispute, but more likely Leib Krysa and his comrades’ feeling of humiliation and fury were concentrated in this severe accusation. Quotations from the Talmud, the Passover Haggadah, and Halakhic literature were placed on

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the table of the dispute, and Rabbi Rapaport, with the assistance of Birkenthal, sought to refute the argument with a different reading of the sources. They also rebuked the Frankists with exceptional daring, sharing with them for the last time, while they were on the verge of total separation, the consciousness of the Jews of Poland, who made a sharp distinction between Jews and Christians: “How can it be that your words do not come from hatred and envy, when you bring up the false accusations by which many Jews were tortured and killed in vain, for no crime, only because of hatred and revenge, that comes to us from the envy of our gentile neighbors, who are always drunk and lazy in their work and follow their desires.”21 Birkenthal’s eyewitness account evokes a curious theological theater that attracted a crowd and took place in the great cathedral of Lwow. Christians and Jews wished to see this civil war; both sides accused each other, in Hebrew, regarding beliefs and religious practices, quoting from books, and the Polish interpreter translated the dispute out loud. To cope with the pressure of the spectators, tickets were sold at the gate, and many people stood outside, waiting for news. At the end of the dispute, when it was clear to everyone that the time had come for the Frankists to convert, the rabbis were forced to remain and hear an hour-long sermon: “A priest stood up, dressed in white linen, and preached and reprimanded us for not believing in the messiah who had come once . . . and nearly two thousand years had passed, and you are growing poorer every day, and why do we have to dispute with you any longer? It should be proof enough for you from your humiliation among the nations for such a long time.” The sound of a medieval Jewish-Christian dispute was heard again in Lwow, and the preacher apparently believed that the conversion of the Frankists was indeed a very encouraging sign of the dissipation of Jewish stubbornness and the victory of Christian truth. An incident broke out at the exit from the cathedral. One of the Frankists confronted Rabbi Rapaport: “H.aim, look, here you have blood for blood, you said our blood is permitted, look, here’s blood for blood.” The group around the rabbi drove them off and hurried to afternoon prayers in the synagogue. According to Birkenthal, Christian youths told him that the sixty men who had taken part in the dispute on the Frankist side were taken into a side room and immediately baptized after their hair, beards, and earlocks were shaved off. The new converts were given Polish names, and “Leib Krysa was called Dominik Krisinski.” The Christian elite of the city understood that a dramatic episode had taken place, and many people beyond Poland were thirsty to know its details. Birkenthal was given the opportunity to shape the story of the events for the Christian world and spread the news: “The uncircumcised German

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merchants, the store owners, and the heads of the city of Lwow waited for me . . . [for instruction about] how to write and print this news item, to send it by the post to distant places and countries, as was the custom of the nations that maintained postal systems in all the countries of Europe. And I answered them with the content of the dispute between us according to my understanding, and they were satisfied.”22 At that time, the early autumn of 1759, there was no longer any doubt that the rift could not be healed. In public baptism ceremonies in Lwow, as noted, Jacob Frank and Leib Krysa, along with about 500 of their followers, were converted, and later, in other places, another 2,500 people were converted. This was not a change of heart, as expected of individual , but the departure of a large, separate, and persecuted group from the Jewish community. The act of separation and official and public adhesion to the rival, hostile religion, in conditions of defiance, revenge, and radical challenge on the part of the sect and of excommunication, exclusion, and persecution on the part of the majority of the Jews, intensified the historical significance of the episode. “No nation is like the Jews,” said Frank in condemnation of his former brethren, “because they are like snakes and crocodiles, there is no love at all among themselves, only envy, hatred, and rebellion of one against the other.”23 Frank did not prepare his followers for conversion until it became clear that they could not live among Jews and that the price of the Polish Church’s intervention was set in advance. Yet he still hoped to retain the separate identity of his sect. Thus this dramatic step had a dual aspect, perhaps one of disguise. Frank explained that Jesus had come to the world “to pave the way for the true messiah. Therefore we must appear to enter the Christian religion,” but he still believe they must not assimilate.24 Conversion did not make the Frankists disappear. Those who avoided conversion went into a deep Sabbatean underground in Poland. Frank himself was arrested in Warsaw in 1760 and sent to prison in the Częstochowa fort in an effort to keep him away from his followers and dismantle the cult, commencing a new chapter in the history of Frankism. Like other dramatic events that reverberated in their time and were preserved in historical memory for generations, the Frankist episode was bursting with meaning, shedding light on deep processes in the modern era. Recently, Maciejko pointed out the great challenge to both Judaism and Christianity posed by what appeared to be a radical upheaval in the natural order and the breaking of social, religious, and moral boundaries.25 More than eighty years earlier, Scholem argued that radical Sabbateanism made a critical contribution to the crisis in modern Judaism and that Frankism eroded the traditional world and rabbinical authority from

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within. This had revolutionary significance as an expression, in theory and religious practice, of the modern desire for freedom.26 The libertine behavior, the religious permissiveness, and the violation of sexual norms fit in with the processes of secularization, and Frank’s multiple identities and masks place him in the gallery of adventurers of the age who led independent lives and defied the conventions of society and culture. The inclination toward the relative equality of women in the Frankist group granted them unprecedented religious and personal empowerment.27 Altogether this was another instance of religious arousal that fits in with the broader movement in the Christian and Jewish worlds of the eighteenth century. Not surprisingly, among those who attended the dispute in Lwow was an emissary of the German pietist movement, the Moravian Brethren of Herrnhut.28 As with other holy societies, with Frankism, too, the subjective experience of the leader of the sect lay the foundations for the adhesion of followers and their self-segregation. Dreams, visions, and Kabbalistic doctrines sustained the group and brought it into opposition against the traditional religion. In this case as well, the intentional violation of laws sparked a fear of anarchy, and it aroused a vehement reaction with the intention of restoring discipline and rejecting personal prophecies and religious enthusiasm. From the viewpoint of the Jews of the time, the episode ended with a great achievement. Far from the focus of the events but well-informed about the details, Jacob Emden regarded 5519 (1759) as an excellent year in which no less than a redemption took place: “Once again the sect of Sabbateans, may their name rot, fell without a chance of recovery from their downfall.”29 Birkenthal, through whose eyes we have viewed the final scenes of the Frankist drama, went even farther. As one of the people of his time capable of identifying turning points in the eighteenth century and of giving them historical significance, he pointed to this year as separating two periods in the history of Polish Jewry. Not only did it see the end of Sabbateanism, whose followers separated themselves from Judaism and thereby proved that there was not a drop of legitimacy or true interpretation among them, but it also saw the end of the dark times of accusations of ritual murder. Without mentioning Elyakim Zelig’s mission to Rome, which took place at the same time, he discussed his success and that of Rabbi Rapaport in refuting the Seventh Accusation in the Lwow dispute about the ritual use of Christian blood: “In my youth truly every day we would be panicked by these evil tidings . . . from the communities of our people, who were in such danger, because of the confusion and falsehood that the Christian priests accused them of.” Now, however, showing his historical awareness, Birkenthal wrote that “all the gentiles of Poland recognized and acknowledged

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that blood libels against the Jews were baseless lies, and from this time on, thank God, no such word is heard in Poland anymore.”30

“M a ster of a De mon”—V isions, Ecsta s y, a n d M agic During the Ne’ila prayers that conclude the Yom Kippur ritual, at the end of the 1750s, the Ba’al Shem Tov experienced an ascent of the soul, which was interpreted in his circle in Medzhybizh, as a marvelous, mystical response to the challenge of Frankism. A Hasidic tradition recounts that “one Yom Kippur Eve the Besht perceived a serious charge brought against the Jews that the oral tradition would no longer be theirs.” The members of his fellowship reported that when he came to the words open the gates of heaven in his prayer, he sank into an ecstatic trance for about two hours, twisted and contorted his body, and uttered inhuman sounds: “The Ba’al Shem Tov began to make terrible gestures, and he bent backwards until his head came close to his knees . . . his eyes bulged and he sounded like a slaughtered bull.” After Yom Kippur, the Ba’al Shem Tov told them that at that time, he was walking from gate to gate in the upper worlds until he found that “prosecution” was the accusation of the blocking of prayers, which had not reached their destination for half a century. Using magical means as keys, “two letters” from the name of God, he managed to free the prayers, and thereby to revoke the decree. Everything that had happened—the burning of the Talmud in Kamieniec, Dembowski’s sudden death, the dispute in Lwow, and the conversions—was merely “the remnant of the decree,” the vestiges of a far severer danger. By means of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s successful intervention, it did not occur. A secondhand tradition that found its way into the stories of Shivh.ei ha-Besht also states that the Kabbalist and Ba’al Shem did not share the feeling of victory over the Frankists and even criticized their being driven to convert: “Concerning those who converted, the Besht said that the Shekinah wailed and said: ‘As long as the member is connected, there is some hope that it will recover, but when the member is cut off there is no repair possible.’ Each person of Israel is a member of the Shekinah.” In the name of solidarity and the belief that the Sabbatean heresy might still be undone, the end of the affair, with the exclusion of the Frankists, was a tragedy, not an achievement.31 About a decade after these events, Abraham of Szarogród arrived in Altona and told Jacob Emden that, alongside Rabbi Rapaport, Rabbi Israel of Medzhybizh, the Ba’al Shem, had taken part in the dispute in Lwow. However, this testimony has been shown to be false. The Ba’al Shem Tov did not take part in the episode, though it took place in a community relatively close to where

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he lived.32 As we have seen, the Hasidic group in Medzhybizh was indeed an example of the enthusiastic religious awakening of the eighteenth century, and the mystical experiences of the Ba’al Shem Tov and his ecstatic behavior were similar to those of the Sabbatean prophets. Hasidic legend has it that the Ba’al Shem Tov found “a spark of holiness in him, but that Satan caught him in his snare, God forbid,” and his soul even came to the Ba’al Shem Tov “for redemption.” The Ba’al Shem Tov only distanced himself after his wickedness became clear, so as not to be harmed himself, “With a mighty thrust the Besht hurled him to the bottom of hell. The Besht peered down and saw that he landed on the same pallet with Jesus.”33 The Ba’al Shem Tov’s confrontation with the Polish clergy, as described in Hasidic writing, was entirely different from the public religious disputes. When the Ba’al Shem Tov sought to prevent a “great prosecution,” he left the house of study to talk with an old priest, and, according to the Hasidic tale, he managed to introduce erotic thoughts about a beautiful woman into the heart of the priest, who had been ascetic all his life, until with great desire he ejaculated for the first time in his life, and thus “with the help of God all the accusers were silenced.”34 The Ba’al Shem Tov’s death on the holiday of Shavuot, 5520 (May 21, 1760), shortly after the conversions in Lwow, was retroactively interpreted as a result of his mystical struggles against the Frankists: “It was decreed that the Ba’al Shem Tov must soon depart because of the very great struggle against the sect of Shabbetai Zevi, as explained above, in the deed of Yom Kippur, when they wanted to burn the Babylonian Talmud.”35 Thus the Hasidic tradition depicted the Ba’al Shem Tov both as one of those who struggled with determination against the Sabbatean challenge and as a victim of that struggle in the upper worlds. In the last years of his life, he was joined by the ascetic Kabbalist Dov Ber, the maggid of Międzyrzecz (1710–1772), who was to become one of the first leaders of Hasidism. One of the stories in Shivh.ei ha-Besht compares his appointment as the Ba’al Shem Tov’s successor to the giving of the Torah at Sinai. When the maggid came to the Ba’al Shem Tov to find a cure for his illness from a Ba’al Shem whose abilities had been warmly recommended, he took part in a mystical ceremony. The Ba’al Shem Tov was studying Kabbalah at midnight while “sitting with a small candle on his head, dressed in the skin of a wolf turned inside out.” He “laid me on a bed like a circle,” Dov Ber recounted, “and I could see nothing. I could only hear voices, and I saw lightening and dreadful torches, and it was like this for about two hours, and I was very frightened, and from that fright, I began to faint.” The blessing he received with the placing of hands on his head before he returned to his home was the mark of his choice as a disciple

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and successor.36 As a mystic who paved a new way for attaining the ideal of cleaving to God, the Ba’al Shem Tov influenced his followers and was famous beyond Międzyrzecz. However, twelve years passed after the Ba’al Shem Tov’s death until the circles of Hasidim, who regarded him as the source of their inspiration, were seen as sufficiently dangerous as to provoke fierce opposition, because they were suspected of being continuers of Sabbateanism. The success of the later Hasidic leaders in laying the foundations for a mass movement is what turned the Ba’al Shem Tov from someone who was important in his time and place into a figure with extraordinary historical significance.37 In a climate in which enthusiasm about the concealed and the enchanted and faith in figures with magical powers and direct pathways to the upper worlds were widespread and the tendency to subjective religious experiences characterized the movements of religious revival, neither the Frankists nor the Hasidism were exceptional. In midcentury, at least three other small Jewish groups existed: in London, around the mysterious figure of Samuel Falk (1710–1782, the Ba’al Shem of London); in Altona, led by Wolf Eybeschütz, the Sabbatean and libertine son of the rabbi of the three communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek; and in Shklow and Brisk, on the initiative of Yekutiel Gordon, who wished to disseminate the silenced teachings of his teacher, Luzzatto. Falk was just a decade younger than the Ba’al Shem Tov. He was also born in Poland, in Podhajce , where underground Sabbateans had been discovered in the past. In the eyes of his enemies, this connected him with that threatening heresy. His family moved to Central Europe while he was still a boy. He wandered about in various places there and was known as an alchemist, a Ba’al Shem and magical healer, and he was nearly executed as a sorcerer.38 Christian aristocrats and Jews who placed their faith in his powers were willing to provide protection for him and to pay generously for his services. The baron of Braunschweig, Georg Ludwig von Rantzau (1714–1786), reported in his memoirs about the “famous Kabbalist,” Samuel H.aim Falk, who had been a guest, among other places, at his father’s estate. He introduced himself as no less than “the famous prince and high priest of the Jews” and attracted attention with the theatrical manner characteristic of the adventurers among his contemporaries. His command of the German language enabled him to debate the principles of the Christian religion, and his magical performances aroused amazement. He quoted another aristocrat about how Falk had cured the daughter of the court Jew of Cassel, who suffered from epilepsy, “by means of Kabbalistic amulets,” and how, with the help of “[Hebrew] letters,” he had astonished everyone when, during a dinner at the home of that Jew, he had made the wine bottles in the locked cellar move. Von Rantzau had been skeptical until, according to the

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report he gave to the Baron von Donop (1767–1845), he had seen with his own eyes how Falk had conjured up a ghost that appeared in his house and carried on a conversation with him in Hebrew. In the park of the estate, Falk had held a special ceremony to find a golden treasure that had been hidden among the roots of the trees, and in a spectacle that he staged to the light of torches and candles, a miraculous knife was seen hovering in the air and obeying his instructions.39 In the midst of the Enlightenment, which had ostensibly stripped away the veil of magic from the world, the trend toward the supernatural actually grew stronger. Beginning in the 1760s, Gothic novels were successful in England, such as British politician Horace Walpole’s sinister Castle of Otranto, which fascinated readers with accounts of mysterious adventures. The novel was permeated by an atmosphere of magic, dreams, and prophecies, and it was populated by paintings that moved and ghosts that appeared to the characters in frightening visions and told them how to escape those who sought to harm them. Nightmares and dreads challenged the picture of the enlightened world, acting according to rational natural laws.40 Warnings from the world of the dead saved Jews from death, as attested in a report sent to Europe by Joseph Sofer of Poland about the earthquake of 1759 in the Land of Israel. The earthquake was felt in the ship; “people said that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to destroy the world,” and the dimensions of the catastrophe were felt in Safed. On the eve of the second earthquake, a ghost sent a warning: “My father came to me a second time in a dream and he said: ‘Son, make sure to tell the people of the city and the whole country wherever there are Jews, that they should not let anyone sleep indoors but outdoors.’ When he rose in the morning, he told everyone about his dream, and a great fear was upon them. He who feared God believed the words and went outside to sleep with their wives and their children,” and those who did not believe perished in the next earthquake on 6 Kislev (November 26, 1759). Samuel Falk fit into this climate, which spread to the western edge of Europe. He moved from Germany to London in the early 1740s. There, for several decades, he exploited the reputation he had gained as possessing marvelous magical powers and a connection with the supernatural to maneuver among the fears and hopes of his contemporaries. In addition to his house in the heart of the city (Wellclose Square), where he lived with his wife and her son, he established a camp on London Bridge, a mysterious house where he engaged in practical Kabbalah and that served as a kind of temple for the ceremonies he held in the presence of the members of his fellowship and visitors. Jacob Emden diligently collected information about Falk. In 1759, he received a letter from an eyewitness, Eliezer Sussman Shesnowzi, who had arrived

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in London from Poland on business and was invited to take part in some of the secret gatherings of the Ba’al Shem. Emden called him an imposter, a ba’al shed, master of a demon, an ignoramus who did not belong to the scholarly elite, and he associated him with Sabbateanism. In his Sefer hitavqut (Book of Struggles) he called him someone “who knows practical Kabbalah and how to act with the power of names to dig and find treasure.” It was all to make a profit; “uncircumcised people with deep pockets believed in him. They wanted him to discover unlimited treasures, what was buried in the earth and sunk in the sea.” For example, he deceived “the rich, great, and huge captain of a ship,” and, although he failed, he enticed that captain to spread Falk’s name as a wonder-worker. Shesnowzi wrote a letter full of excitement to his son. Emden, who published the letter after editing it and changing words of praise into blame, still found it hard to conceal the original excitement. The letter describes the company of Falk’s followers, who listened to his voice and took part in various ceremonies in the house on London Bridge or at night in the forest.41 Falk himself kept a personal, mystical journal documenting the ceremonies he organized. He listed his visitors and described his networks of connections, which included, among others, the Boaz family in Holland, members of the Freemasons, and princes of royal courts, and he also reported on his dreams and wrote down magic spells.42 An even more intimate look into the world of the Ba’al Shem of London is provided by the journal of his faithful servant and admirer, Tsevi Hirsh of Kalisz, who wrote nearly every day, in great detail, about what had happened in the places where their mystical ceremonies were held. The servant prepared various items, made sure to immerse them in the ritual bath, joined in the recitation of songs of praise, and knew about everything that took place in Falk’s house, including his quarrels with his wife and difficulties with the son, Gedalia, who was frequently imprisoned because of debts he accrued. In his journal, he told stories of marvels and praise. For example, once when Falk forgot the keys to the house on the bridge, “he had no choice and was forced to mention a certain name, and the gate of the camp opened by itself.” On another occasion, the members of the fellowship were astonished to see his sword rise into the air and plunge into the gate of the camp. The Ashkenazi community of London tried to expel Falk’s company, who attended his private synagogue. They called him an idolatrous sorcerer, and Tzevi Hirsh of Kalisz reported that spies were sent to them “to see who was going to the Sage’s synagogue.” But the more people flocked to his door, the more Falk’s status grew in strength. In the winter of 1750, he wrote in the journal: “Today Rabbi Simh.a Segal brought his mad son Isaac into the house of the Sage [Falk], and the Sage tested him, to see whether he was insane by nature or by a qelipa

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[the force of impurity that possessed him], and he found that it was the qelipa.” His success in exorcising the dybbuk was temporary, but belief in the powers of the Ba’al Shem only increased, and the atmosphere of mystery in which he enveloped himself attracted people seeking help.43 Wolf Eybeschütz had a much more direct connection with Sabbateanism, as noted. Most of the reports about him also come through Emden, who did not spare any investigation, rumor, testimony, or correspondence to impugn “the fool,” his great rival’s son. The sources depict the figure of a young Kabbalist who claimed divine inspiration as well as another “holy society,” this time in northern Germany, “the trusted ones,” who were convinced of the correct doctrine they received from their leader and contemptuously mocked believers in the tradition, who were a “mixed multitude.” The younger Eybeschütz was nineteen or twenty when he returned from an educational tour of Sabbatean centers in Moravia, Poland, and Thessalonica and just at the time when the Frankist episode ended in Lwow, he established a new center in Altona for his followers and visiting Sabbateans, which lasted for a short time. His father boasted that Wolf was “a greater scholar and Kabbalist than himself, who revealed awesome secrets.”44 From 1759 to 1762, Wolf Eybeschütz led a group of initiates from a large and splendid mansion in Altona, a Sabbatean cell where prayers were held in a private synagogue, Kabbalah was studied, and ecstatic mystical ceremonies were performed. It was reported that “he speaks with the Shekhina and falls to the ground, and the breath of life does not remain in him”; that he had the ability to wage war against the qelipot; that he experienced visions; that he costumed himself as a sultan in Turkish costume; that he sat in an inner chamber on a golden throne, which he called the sea of Solomon; that he boasted of mastery of alchemy and the making of large quantities of gold; and that he hosted Sabbateans like Moshe David of Podhajce , who was connected with Falk and his followers in London. Eybeschütz’s disciple called him by the messianic epithet yemini (the right hand), and according to Jacob Emden, he was meant to be the crown prince who would lead all the Sabbateans. Wolf Eybeschütz’s way of life, as a stylish Jew, aroused special curiosity. The young Kabbalist presented himself not only as possessing mystical knowledge and abilities, but also as a wealthy aristocrat who led an ostentatious life. Next to his mansion was a large park with decorative trees, paths for strolling, and expensive marble statues, including sculptures of women with bare breasts, and “pools of water for play and pleasure” were planned. The mansion was decorated with porcelain vessels, decorative clocks, and some paintings. Wolf was seen riding around town in a gilded carriage, accompanied by

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servants and “wearing a powdered wig on his head, with his three-cornered hat lying on the upholstery of the carriage, across from him, like the haughty ministers.” Rumors spread of sexual license and carousing. According to Emden’s biting and sarcastic remarks, the father used to defend his son’s libertine way of life with the claim that “because of his great sanctity, it is necessary to moderate the power of his holiness, so that the arm of sanctity will not be [too] greatly strengthened, in a manner that the world cannot bear such mighty holiness.”45 The group did not fall apart until Wolf Eybeschütz was overwhelmed with debt. He sold his property and left the city to fulfill his ambitions to penetrate high society, first in Moravia and then in Saxony. On the map of contradictory trends among the Jews of the eighteenth century, one can place him simultaneously on the curve of religious awakening of the midcentury and the history of the Sabbatean movement and also on that of the processes of acculturation among the rococo, fashionable Jews. Maciejko explains: “The case of Wolf Eybeschütz is perhaps the best example of the gradual process of change, showing the complex interplay of Sabbateanism in the mid-eighteenth century along with broader factors of secularization and assimilation.”46 Our knowledge about Yekutiel Gordon and his society is much more slender, but his case appears to fit into the ambition to disseminate Kabbalistic teachings with increasing and stronger trends toward a new world. With him, however, this was mainly the awakening of skepticism and criticism of religion. Gordon left Padua, as did Luzzatto, who settled in Venice. After leaving Luzzatto’s company, Gordon went first to Shklow and then to Brisk. In the two communities in White Russia and Lithuania, Gordon worked as a physician and also tried with all his ability to teach Luzzatto’s doctrines to a group of students from the manuscripts he had taken with him, saving them from the fate of the confiscated writings.47 In the winter of 1752, in Altona, testimony was taken from “the eminent Gedalia Ben Yitsh.aq Halevi,” whom Gordon had tried to enlist in the “holy society” he had founded. He reported that Gordon “indeed took with him a very thick book and said that it was the work of his rabbi, Luzzatto, from which he prays and exalts, and according to which he does everything , and he studies that handwritten book with students and friends who listen to him.” To convince the prospective member that he was the heir of Luzzatto, he said “that he heard a voice from heaven several times, saying: ‘Peace be with you, rabbi.’” Like a secret society in the style of the Freemasons, special uniforms were made for the members, black silk hats and similar shoes. Rumor had it that this band, in the darkness of its secret assemblies, not only studied Kabbalah but also sinned with sexual license (“they had a gentile prostitute in their fellowship

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who was shared by them all”). In this case as well, Emden is the main hostile source. While he did dismiss suspicion that Luzzatto was a heretic, he regarded Yekutiel Gordon as part of the Sabbatean network. The testimony from Altona reported that Gordon’s teaching combined messianic Sabbatean beliefs with the radical principle of revoking the commandments and a deistic critique of the rabbinical elite and its manipulative control over the innocent people who heeded it. Gedalia Levi reported what he had heard from Gordon: “The messiah has already come, and the Torah in general is revoked in a way that there is no obligation of the commandments at all,” because the Shekhina has left her exile, and “there is nothing to the words of the Sages, especially their exaggerations about the punishments of Genenna . . . which is meant only to intimidate and mislead the masses.”48 In the demonic universe described by Emden’s writings and in reports about the mystical circles and Sabbatean cells in the 1750s, it appears that their contemporaries took the Frankists and groups like the ones established by Samuel Falk, Wolf Eybeschütz, and Yekutiel Gordon to be subversive uprisings against Jewish society from within. In the name of a subjective religious truth, each of these groups challenged the conventional norms in its own way, and the personal drive of the central figures, who were gifted with initiative and high self-esteem, created a feeling of threat and instability. The declared motives, as expressed in various teachings and statements by the leaders of the new groups, derived from religion and the belief in inspiration from heaven based on visions and Kabbalistic and magical knowledge. The modern spirit of liberty and criticism is also evident through the appearance of this movement of religious awakening in the mid-eighteenth century. In the dark house in in Lanckorona , sexual promiscuity reached a wild height in a radical religious ritual. In the camp on London Bridge, magical deeds were performed by a Kabbalist who frequented the aristocracy and gained status and profit by virtue of his claim to marvelous magical powers. In Shklow, Luzzatto’s disciple whispered deist teachings to the candidate for membership in the fellowship of Kabbalists, and in a mansion in Altona, a mystical court was formed whose leader appeared in public as a fashionable hedonist. Finally, in Medzhybizh, the Ba’al Shem leveled criticism at the rabbis in his house of study because of their failure in the Frankist episode. An opaque and obscure comment by him appears in the story of the ascent of his soul toward the end of his life. Its vehemence and subversiveness, its blunt language, the contrarian position it contains, and especially the pointing of an accusatory finger cannot be ignored: “He was very angry with the rabbis and said that it was because of them, since they invented lies of their own and wrote false introductions.”49

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Note s 1. See Yisrael Bartal, “Yehudim polanim bedrom ma’arav eiropa beemtsa’ hameah ha-18,” in Temurot bahistoria hayehudit hah.adasha: qovets mamarim shai leshmuel ettinger, ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), 434–437. 2. See Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Maciejko, “Frankism,” The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 540–544; Maciejko, “The Literary Character and Doctrine of Jacob Frank’s The Words of the Lord,” Kabbalah 9 (2003): 175–210; Meir Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafrankit, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1934); Gershom Scholem, “Mitsva haba’ha be’avera,” Meh.qarim umeqorot letoldot hashabtaut vegilguleiha (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1974), 9–67; Scholem, “Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin,” ibid., 116–140; Rachel Elior, “Sefer divrei headon leya’aqov franq: otomitographia mistit, nihilism dati veh.azon hah.erut hameshih.i kerealizatsia shel mitos umetafora,” in Hah. alom veshivro—hatenu’a hashabtait usheluh. oteiha: meshih. iut, shabtaut ufranqism, vol. 2, ed. Rachel Elior (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2001), 471–548; Alexander Kraushar, Franq ve’adato, vol. 1 (Warsaw: M. Lewinski, 1896); A. Y. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha; meh. qarim betoldot galitsia bameah hashmone-‘esre (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1956), 195–275. 3. G. [Goldney], “Friendly Address to the Jews,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 29 (June 1759): 269–270. See Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Harbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 65; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 149–150. 4. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 267–269; Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafranqit, 285–286; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 124. 5. Sid Z. Leiman, “Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz’s Attitude towards the Frankists,” Polin 15 (2003): 145–151. 6. Jacob Emden, Resen mat’e, in Lior Gottlieb, “Resen mat`e lerabbi Yaakov Emden,” in Bedrachei shalom, ed. Benjamin Ish Shalom (Jerusalem: Beit Morasha, 2007), 318. 7. Ibid., 301. 8. Ibid., 302–310. 9. Scholem, “Mitsva haba’ha be’avera,” 52–57. 10. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 214; Jacob Emden, Sefer shimush (Amsterdam, 1758–1762), fols. 82–83; Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafranqit, 110–112. 11. See Elior, “Sefer divrei headon leya’aqov franq,” 485. 12. Sefer divrei headon, para. 11, 32, 285, 436, 512, 513, 579, 890, 1018, respectively. 13. Ibid., para. 997.

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14. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 215. See also Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Shabbatai Zevi, 1666–1816, trans. Deborah Greniman (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011). 15. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 215–216; Balaban, Letoldot hatenu’a hafranqit, 116–127. 16. Emden, Resen mat’e, 316–318. 17. Ibid., 316–317. 18. Emden, Sefer shimush, fol. 7b; Israel Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 341–525, I (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990), 417–418. For a fuller version of the excommunication, “H.erev pifiot,” Otsar h. okhma, vol. 1 (Lemberg: Poremba, 1859), 22–28. 19. Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafranqit, 133–151; Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 222–223; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 86–89. 20. Shimon Dubnow, Divrei yemei ‘am ‘olam, VII (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965), 118; Scholem, “Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin,” 121–122; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 158–159. 21. On the Lwow dispute, see Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 225–253; Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafranqit, 198–266; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 106–112. 22. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 248–250; Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafranqit, 213–224. 23. Sefer divrei headon, para. 807. 24. Scholem, “Hatenu’a hashabtait bepolin,” 124–126. 25. See Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 264. 26. See Scholem, “Mitsva haba’ha be’avera,” 14–15. 27. See Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in EighteenthCentury Europe (Philadelphia and Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) 78–83. Rapaport-Albert, “’Al ma’amad hanashim bashabtaut.” 28. See Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 128. 29. Emden, Sefer shimush, fols. 82–83. See Avraham Ya’ari, “Letoldot milh.amatam shel h.akhmei polin betenu’at franq,” Meh. qerei sefer (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1958), 450–465; Gershon David Hundert, Jews in PolandLithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 156–159. 30. See Gershon D. Hundert, “The Introduction to Divrei Binah by Dov Ber of Bolechow: An Unexamined Source for the History of the Jews in the Lwow Region in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,” AJS Review 33, no. 2 (2009): 225–269. 31. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Besht], The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 54–59.

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32. On “The Horrible Incident in Podolia,” see Balaban, Letoldot hatenua’ hafranqit, 295–320; Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Hagiografia ‘im he’arot shulayim: sipurei shevah.im veketiva historit bah.asidut,” in H.asidim veshabtaim, anashim venashim (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2015), 133–136. 33. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, 86–87. 34. Ibid., 248. 35. Ibid., 255–257. 36. Ibid., 81–84. See also Immanuel Etkes, Ba’al hashem: habesht – magia, mistiqa, hanhaga (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2000), 195–198. 37. Moshe Rosman, Habesht meh. adesh hah. asidut (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1999), 234. 38. See Michal Oron, Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter? The Eighteenth-Century Ba’al Shem of London (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2020); H. Adler, “The Baal Shem of London,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 26 (1902–1905): 148–173; David Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 300–303; David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewish Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 161–169. 39. See Memoires du Comte de Rantzow, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1741), 196–226, cited here according to Oron, Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter?, 29–33. 40. Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, ed. Nick Groom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 41. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fols. 126–130. 42. Samuel Falk’s journal, cited from Oron, Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter?, 165–239. 43. Journal of Tsevi Hirsh of Kalisz, cited from Oron, Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter?, 69–163. 44. On Wolf Eybeschütz, see Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fol. 37b-165b (“The Laughter of the Fool”); Emden, Sefer shimush, fols. 82–84; Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. Avraham Bick (Jerusalem: Moreshet Jerusalem, 1979), 257–260; Yehuda Liebes, “H.ibur belashon hazohar ler. Wolf ben r. yehonatan eibeshits ‘al h.avurato ve’al sod hageula,” in Sod haemuna hashabtait (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1995), 109–122; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 199–222. 45. All this information was gathered by Emden and is mainly found in Sefer hitavqut, from fol. 47 on. The quotation is from fol. 50a. 46. See Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 206, 232; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization, 112–114. 47. See Isaiah Tishby, “Darkhei hafatsatam shel kitvei lharamh.a”l bepolin uvelita,” H.iqrei qabala ushluh. oteiha, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1993), 911–940. 48. Emden, Beit yehonatan hasofer, fol. 6a-b; Emden, Torat haqanaut, fol. 57b-58a. 49. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, 55.

six

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INTIMATE LIFE Bodily Ailments, Quarrels, Crime, and Emigration

The threatening scene visible from Jacob Emden’s window in Altona was merely part of the picture. His deep fear of Sabbatean heresy enlarged the dimensions of Wolf Eybeschütz’s band in his mind, though it was relatively marginal, and only few took part in it. As a confirmed warrior for the “old lights,” he viewed the new phenomena, which he eagerly documented—from radical Kabbalah, which turned sins into commandments, to libertinism, the desire for a fashionable lifestyle and the rationalist critique of the religion—as a single enormous plot intended to overthrow the Jewish religion and turn the world upside down and ipso facto as a challenge to rabbinical authority. The figure of Emden is illuminated less by his harsh polemical writing than by the pages of his autobiography, Megilat sefer, showing that during the years when he was waging his determined public campaign, he was troubled by a series of other problems. In this intimate memoir, the criticisms of the defender of the faith are intermingled with the existential concerns of a man in his sixties. His victory over his enemies offered him some consolation. Indeed, several of the wealthy men who had risen against him in the confrontation with Jonathan Eybeschütz had fallen into debt and fled from the community. With schadenfreude he heard that severe illness and decrepit old age were tormenting his sworn enemy, and on September 18, 1764, stricken with paralysis, Eybeschütz died. Emden did not feel a drop of pity for his rival’s harsh and degrading death. In words throbbing with hatred, he told how “the repulsive old devil” couldn’t control his body anymore and lost the power of speech, until “at the end of Elul the revolting man croaked, perished without consciousness, without a confession or remorse,” and even after his death, “his pollution did not cease.”1

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E v ery day Concer ns: Sick ne ss, Old Age, Com petition, a n d Insu lt Pain struck Emden himself and his family in those years. In the winter of 1758, two of his children caught smallpox, and one was blinded for several months. The boy to whom his third wife gave birth was wounded during his circumcision. Later, Esther, his recently married daughter, died in Poland, and Emden also mourned the death of a baby girl. His grief for the loss was huge and paralyzing, and bodily ailments continued to torment him as he grew older. In the same breath, he reported that in 1763, Sefer shimush, his anti-Frankist polemic, was published, Esther died, and once more he suffered the great pain of hemorrhoids and could see death before his eyes. Weakness, dizziness, and loss of blood caused him great suffering: “The flow of the golden tendon [i.e., urine] arose abundantly within me. . . . For a few days I was in enormous pain, as I could not sleep at night because of the pain.”2 However, following the Ethics of the Fathers, which states “at sisty, one is an elder,” Emden exhorted those who, like him, had passed that age “not to be too sorry for torments . . . since you were already fit to die being the age of sixty, which is the average age of death for everyone.”3 The autonomous individuals’ growing awareness of the meaning and quality of their life also drew attention to old age. An English book offering guidance to someone in the last years of his life begins with a call not to regard aging as only the waning of life: “Healthful old age is the most valuable and happy period of human Life.” Freedom from “the empire of the passions” makes possible pure enjoyment and length of days, as long as principles of health are preserved and the old person adapts himself to a moderate way of life, habits of eating and sleeping suitable to the body, exercise, and natural means of coping with weakness and faintness.4 In the first volume, we followed the rabbinical career of Pinch.as Katzenellbogen (1691–1764) through the personal voice revealed in his memoir, Yesh manh.ilin. Like Emden, he was oppressed by old age. He agreed to serve in the rabbinate of Boskowitz in Moravia, despite his belief that he was worthy of assisting in a more successful and central community. When he approached his seventieth year and lost his wife, he worked on preparing his will, making an inventory of his library, which was to be bequeathed to his son, and passing his life story on to his descendants. His heart was broken when, less than a year after losing his wife, his twenty-one-year-old daughter, Rivka, died after giving birth, and all his prayers were unanswered: “She screamed with a bitter voice like a baby—words and sighs and moans—so that the eyes of everyone who heard her flowed with unceasing tears.” He thanked God for

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enabling him to reach his sixties, but the last years had brought torment: “My eyesight is no longer with me, and my left eye has gone blind.” This made it difficult for him to read and write. Like Emden, he suffered from insomnia, urinary problems, and hemorrhoids. He complained, “In the time of old age, it is scanty and comes out drop by drop, and now in the days of old age on occasion blood comes out with my feces and the flow stops as with women whose menstruation ceases with old age.” In a despairing letter that he sent to his brother in 1760, he confessed to his increasing weakness and considered moving to Fürth to retire from the rabbinate and live in a modest room where he could count on regular meals, study Torah, and pray with a quorum, “as it is difficult to me to move from the walls of my home to the house of prayer because of several painful feelings.”5 For Emden and Katzenellbogen, pain and the intimate, personal concerns of the relatively hidden area of life did set aside dramatic, resounding events. However, at midcentury, several disputes and local disagreements arose in the public sphere—though somewhat overshadowed by the well-documented episodes involving enthusiastic religious awakening. Beginning in 1755, a Halakhic dispute around the kashrut of the beef slaughtered in London agitated the community. The dispute arose when H.aim Albels, a slaughterer, claimed the cows were infected with lung disease, making the beef unfit. Every time it was slaughtered caused the commotion. Slaughterers were dismissed, and new ones were appointed. The Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbis confronted each other and sought assistance from their colleagues outside of England. Rabbi Ya’aqov Kimh.i, a wandering scholar from Istanbul who had settled in London, addressed the Ashkenazi rabbi, Zevi Hirsh Levin (1721–1800), demanding the dismissal of the slaughterers who acted improperly. Instead of inflating the lungs in order to discover a flaw, they cut out the injured part, and thus, in the opinion of Kimh.i and others, “they were feeding non-kosher meat to the Jews.” Along with the Halakhic arguments, awareness of a historical trend of great significance was growing. The opinion issued by Rabbi Isaac Nieto (1702–1774) includes a warning to rabbis that “if we did not permit the inflation [of the animal’s lungs], there is suspicion that, perish the thought, they would buy non-kosher meat from the gentiles, since this is a place of freedom, and we are incapable of protesting.” This was tantamount to an admission by the rabbinical elite of the limitations of its authority. Defining London as “a place of freedom” required a Halakhic policy different from that of other communities, so as not to enlarge the circle of permissiveness and the indifference to religious discipline.6 Another dispute broke out in 1755, when Amsterdam printers, the brothers Joseph and Jacob Proops, were in the midst of one of their great projects, the

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printing of the Talmud. They were stunned to discover that a printing house in Sulzbach, near Nuremberg, was competing with them with their own edition. Was it not true that the Amsterdam printers had the approbation of the rabbis of Poland, who promised them exclusivity, so that no one was permitted to trespass on their area for twenty-five years and print the Talmud at the same time? With fury, the Proops brothers protested against the injustice and wrote to the Council of Four Lands: “People have emerged whose hearts are ruled by jealousy, to ambush us on every road.” The council suspended its dealings with Sabbateanism to condemn the violation of discipline and the blow to the authority of the rabbis, who had granted approbation for the Amsterdam edition. The council also announced that it was absolutely forbidden to buy the Sulzbach edition, which was born in sin: “May the ears ring of all who hear that a printer in the holy community of Sulzbach acted in a slippery way to disobey the words of the sages of the generation and also to print the the Talmud, and it was of little consequence for them to break the law.” The council met in Konstantinow and issued a severe resolution excommunicating the printers and permitting the destruction of the illicit copies of the Talmud. “What they print of the Six Orders is like what was confiscated in the past,” the rabbis of the Council of Four Lands decreed, that “heaven forfend that they should be read, and they are condemned to the fire.” In this dispute, as in that of London, it turned out that they couldn’t count on obedience. The printer, Meshulam Zalman Ben Aharon of Sulzbach, was not deterred by the ban and the threats, and he stood up to Amsterdam and Poland to defend his private initiative, his business, and his right to compete in the Jewish book market. He claimed he was unaware of the exclusive license granted to Amsterdam and that many rabbis had already granted approval of his edition. He complained because the opposition had only just arisen, when, “for a year and a half my fame has been abroad in the world,” and several tractates had already been printed. Meshulam Zalman did not conceal his ambition to attain an advantage over the Proops brothers in that he asked for a much lower price without compromising the quality of the printing. The dispute was double. On the one hand lay economic interests and the demand for a free market and the breaking of a monopoly, and on the other lay the clash in authority between the leadership in Poland and in Germany. In a kind of declaration of independence, the rabbis of Central Europe, headed by David Strauss (?–1762) of Fürth and Joshua Heschel (1693–1771) of Schwabach, protested against condemnation of the Sulzbach edition by the authority which, in their opinion, the Poles had unjustly usurped: “Who has placed the

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rabbis of Poland above the rabbis of Ashkenaz and the other countries, to rule over them and burn them with the breath of their mouths?”7 Struggles for power and control were waged in Frankfurt, too, tearing the community into two rival parties. The social and class structure of the Frankfurt “ghetto” afforded positions in the institutions of leadership only to men of lineage and wealth among the approximately 2,500 residents. For years, the Kann family controlled key positions, mainly concerning the community treasury, but it was challenged by the Kulp family with charges of corruption, financial irregularities, lack of transparency, and dictatorial behavior. Ber Leib Yitsh.aq Kann was the strongman of the community, the main money manager, and the son-in-law of the Viennese court Jew, Samson Wertheimer (1658–1724). He was opposed by David Meir Kulp, who was also wealthy and well-connected and who was backed by a party of political protest. The tumult in Frankfurt lasted for several years. The rebels broke into a meeting of the parnasim and tried to overthrow Kann’s regime. Petitions were addressed to the municipal council and the court of Emperor Franz I (1708–1765, Maria Theresa’s husband), who ruled over Frankfurt. Soldiers were dispatched occasionally to quell rioting in the streets. The leadership was surprised by the violation of discipline and the challenge to its status and prerogatives. The rebellious and critical party was therefore accused of malicious subversiveness and responsibility for “a plot of evildoers and strongmen, of conspiring in a conspiracy of traitors to be unanimously against the community and the honor of its leadership.” The demand for reform challenged the Kann family’s control, and they defended themselves with the claim that a mortal blow had been dealt to the prestige of the community: “The rebels . . . were moved by the malice of their heart to march against a poor and destitute nation and destroy and spoil the status and situation of our community.” In 1754, new regulations were agreed upon, making it possible to include the Kulp family in the leadership and to guarantee financial transparency. The tension did not die down until the death of the two rivals in the early 1760s and the appointment of ombudsmen with the authority to discuss complaints about violations of the regulations.8 David Kulp’s protest broke out in the form of competition among the elite families, but at the same time, protest was lodged against them from the weak margins of Jewish society. The “Song of the Yeshiva Boys of Frankfurt” was written in midcentury by a young Talmudic scholar who was living in the community so as to devote himself to the study of Torah. The poem voiced the protest of an embittered and impoverished group, which, although it ostensibly represented the fulfillment of the highest values of the society, felt itself humiliated. The poem, which heaps up the complaints and protests against their poor

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treatment, begins: “Here in Frankfurt the yeshiva boys are tormented with many pains.” The young, unmarried wandering scholars, who arrived in the famous community equipped with letters of recommendation and confident that their abilities and diligence in Torah study would open the householders’ doors for them, were sorely disappointed. During the week they slept on the benches of the House of Study, and on the Sabbath and holidays, they were required to obtain a “ticket” entitling them to a place to sleep and a meal: “We finally receive a place to sleep with great flattery, a room where it’s impossible to stand straight, a short bed like the one of Sodom, dark as the abyss, and guests—rats and mice—race around us. . . . How we suffer from fleas and ticks. At the householder’s we suffer great sorrows. He treats us like a servant. He says, ‘You have to obey me in everything. Without me you would have croaked.’”9 These were not beggars or an outcast group like the peddler women in Lithuania. Some of them would eventually join the rabbinical elite. But the humiliating dependence on the goodwill of the householders, the contempt (“Everywhere the yeshiva boy goes, they spit on him, keeping their distance from him as from a stench”) and rejection they faced, and the feelings of being a burden and nuisance insulted them to the depths of their soul.

M usic, OU TL AWS in Engl a n d a n d Ger m a n y, a n d th e H a r dships of A dj usting in A m er ica Historical sources like the yeshiva boys’ protest song from Frankfurt preserve quite a few stories about life, tensions, and voices that had almost no influence on the public discourse shaped by the leaders and rabbis. For example, the encounter of some Jews of Frankfurt with European high culture, such as when they went to the opera, is mentioned only in passing. At a performance of an Italian opera in October 1754, part of the balcony collapsed onto the boxes where the prominent people were sitting, and eyewitnesses reported that “Jewish women and Christian gentlemen fell upon one another.”10 Another encounter of Jewish culture with the new music took place when Rabbi Jacob Raphael Saraval (1707–1782) adapted and translated Georg Friedrich Händel’s (1685–1759) oratorio, Esther, from English. In the instructions for performance of the work (apparently around the time of Purim, 1757, in the Amsterdam community, this time to music by Cristiano Lidarti), with the Hebrew title of “The Redemption of Israel by Esther,” Saraval wrote on the title page: “To sing according to the melody with joy and pleasant tones.” The romantic themes in the plot, which speak to the heart of every man and woman, are combined with awareness of exile. Thus, for example, the couple Esther and Ahasuerus sing a

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duet: “There I will give you all my love, there I will have a surfeit of pleasure, let the king come to his sweet things, today we will be sated together with love.” But the chorus complains: “Grieve for the house of Israel, foreigners on your land, they cast their lot.”11 Ephraim Luzzatto (1729–1792), a physician and graduate of the University of Padua, was also a talented and witty Hebrew poet who continued the Italian Jewish tradition. In 1755, he moved to London and joined circles of high-living gamblers as a pleasure-seeking libertine. Within a few years, Luzzatto demonstrated his English patriotism in a poem in honor of the wedding of George III (1738–1820) and the German princess Charlotte Sophia (1744–1818). In the midst of the Seven Years’ War, he combined the delicate erotic tone that characterized many of his poems with the hopes for a decisive British victory over France: “For on his right a spouse will soon stand, behold she comes, behold Charlotte comes, the king is suddenly happy, his soul lives, he will rule from sea to sea with heroism, she will rule over him with her loveliness, and France will always tremble under their discipline, for the Lord will raise their horn forever.”12 Nothing would be known about another visitor to London, the merchant “Henry Simonds the Polish Jew,” had he not become involved in prolonged trials because he was (or claimed to be) robbed soon after he landed on the shores of England. In 1752, crimes aroused curiosity and filled a pamphlet about the dangerous life of a Jew who had traveled in Turkey, Germany, and Holland to make a living before arriving in London to purchase watches and clothing. He claimed that he had hidden 558 ducats on his body. He was staying for the night in an inn on his way to Bristol when he was violently attacked in his bed in the middle of the night, and all his money was stolen. He went to the window and shouted for rescue in Yiddish, and the robbers returned to his room, put a knife to his throat, and threatened his life. The Old Bailey court denied his claim, and “the Jew,” as he was called in testimony, was accused of perjury. For one shilling, readers could judge the complex case for themselves: Was “the Jew,” who spoke only a few words of broken English with a foreign accent, a sophisticated cheat or a victim? A drawing of the clearly foreign image of Henry Simonds appeared at the beginning of the pamphlet; he is depicted as a Jew wearing a black yarmulke with an unkempt beard and a melancholy look, emphasizing his figure as strange and different in the city of London. The author of the pamphlet presented himself as repelled by violation of the truth, but he did wonder why perjury should be punishable by death.13 Among the documents of Old Bailey are files of Jewish suspects from the lowest rank of the social hierarchy, such as Michael Levi, who sold wares from

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a stall in the street. In 1751, he was found guilty of seducing and raping a twelveyear-old boy named Benjamin Tailor. Character witnesses who praised his devotion to the religion and emphasized his regular attendance at prayer in the synagogue did not manage to commute the sentence of death imposed on him after the boy’s testimony—which included the claim that Levi had cruelly forced himself on him—was heard.14 A detailed report about the prominent part played by the Jews of Germany in the world of crime went beyond a glimpse into dark lives and identified a social problem that demanded description and explanation. The book, published in Kassel in 1758, was the product of research and examination of court documents and was entirely devoted to Jewish thieves and murderers and “notorious” gangs of thieves. As we have seen, this was not a new phenomenon. In the wake of increased control of the population and significant reduction in residence permits and possibilities of earning a living, Jews were driven from the lower classes into a life of wandering as beggars and criminals. This document did not refer to isolated individuals but to dozens and hundreds who were caught by the police and judicial system. About three hundred Jewish criminals from the mid-eighteenth century are mentioned in the book. They came from Poland, Alsace, Denmark, Switzerland, and various German states. Most of them had families and had been wandering all their lives. Some were old people of sixty or seventy. Each of them had his own specialty in the criminal professions. Some of them had escaped from prison, and others had converted to Christianity once or twice in the effort to improve their plight. They were mainly convicted of breaking into houses, grocery stores, taverns, churches, and post offices. The register of criminals sought to present as full a profile as possible: Moshe the thief and black Zekel; Mendel Hofer, forty-five years old, with curly black hair and with a wife and a red-haired child, accused of robbing two houses at night; Jonah Vidish, forty years old, of average size, with a long, narrow face, black hair, allegedly robbed a post office near Hannover; Josel the redhead, short, accused of breaking into a grocery store; and Shimen Bukhnes, forty-seven years old, also short, the husband of Fromet and the father of an adolescent boy, suspected of possessing a hundred stolen reichsthaler. After Bukhnes’s arrest, he underwent severe attacks of epilepsy and was released and deported.15 Johann Bierbrauer (1712–1760) who devoted a detailed study to the documentation of Jewish crime, also explained its circumstances. Because permanent residence in the communities was restricted and the Jews were forced to earn their living from commerce, they became a miserable nation whose lives were unstable. More than others, they traveled on the road and endangered

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their lives to gain a livelihood. Desperate, wandering beggars pleaded with their brethren for meal and lodging tickets. It is estimated that the proportion of the poor among the Jews in the German states in midcentury was growing. Only 2 percent belonged to the wealthy families of the elite, and more than 60 percent were impoverished.16 Growth in the proportion of poverty as described in this extraordinary document explains the great presence of Jews in the criminal professions. Many Jews earned their living by peddling, necessarily placing them on the border between honest business and crime. Bierbrauer had another explanation as well. He removed the Jewish criminals from an inferior socioeconomic group deserving of empathy and labeled them as hostile and dangerous because of their belief that the entire world belonged to the seed of Abraham and that God’s choice justified theft from the “goyim.” It was no wonder that only Christians were the victims of their crimes.17 For ambitious and courageous young people, emigration to America offered a new path for escaping the misery of life in Europe and an opportunity for economic success in conditions of freedom and tolerance. Compared to the waves of immigration in later centuries, only a few Jews in the eighteenth century chose to cross the ocean and settle in the New World in hopes of a dramatic improvement in their fate. However, beginning in midcentury, emigration to America of young unmarried men from Germany, Holland, England, and even Poland marked the expansion of the Jewish universe. In their ambition to exploit opportunities for making a living and possibly to get rich, these Ashkenazi Jews joined the small communities established by Sephardim in North America, and within a short time, they became the majority. In the eighteenth century, more than two thousand Ashkenazim and Sephardim together formed small communities of merchants, especially in New York (the Shearith Israel congregation), Philadelphia, and Newport, Rhode Island—but also in isolated towns, where the Jews opened stores, and on the roads, where they wandered as industrious peddlers.18 For New Christians from the Iberian Peninsula, the New World was primarily a place of refuge from the threatening arm of the Inquisition, and the freedom they attained there made possible a great transformation in their lives. One of the most prominent and successful of them was Aaron Lopez (1731–1782), who emigrated from his native city, Lisbon, in 1752 and joined his brother, Moses, in Newport, where he openly reverted to Judaism, changed his name from Duarte to Aaron, was circumcised, and began to observe the commandments. Within a few years, Lopez became a wealthy merchant and one of the heads of the community. Along with Jacob Rodrigues Rivera (1717–1789), he took part in the transatlantic slave trade between North America, the West

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Indies, and Africa. His ships transported rum to Africa, where it was sold. Black slaves were purchased, and they were sold, among other places, in South Carolina, Jamaica, and Barbados. Lopez’s commercial empire developed in parallel with the growth of the economic elite in Central Europe but out of free enterprise and without dependence on emperors and princes and the monopolies they granted by their grace. The commercial networks depended on family connections and solidarity among the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the New World, and they gave impetus to commerce in almost every commodity that was in demand, from luxury goods imported from England to sugar, fish, and spermaceti candles. As one of his biographers called him, Lopez was a “colonial American merchant prince.”19 In the 1750s, Issachar Ber Gratz (Bernard, 1738–1801) and his brother, Michael (1740–1811), took their first steps toward financial success. Ambition to advance in business was the driving force in their lives. They emigrated to London from their village, Langendorf, in Silesia, were apprenticed to Jewish merchants there, and went on to Philadelphia, where they became wealthy leaders of the community. Michael was only nineteen when he arrived in 1759, following in his brother’s footsteps equipped with clear instructions. He was told that he must decide whether to open a store in a rural area or join his brother, who was working in the commercial house of David Franks (1720–1794), where he could acquire experience and knowledge about the economic opportunities offered by America. He was advised to buy desirable merchandise that could be sold at a profit, such as silver watches, watch chains, gloves, and women’s shoes. Most important of all, as a condition for success, in Philadelphia he must embrace the proper ethos of the merchant. He advised his brother that the place required integrity, diligence, and a pleasant temperament without pride and that he needs to fully dedicate himself to the business.20 The Gratz brothers’ letters are part of a body of hundreds of letters and documents that reveal quite a bit about the life of Jewish immigrants. A letter from Port Eduard, Canada, to Jewish merchant Hyman Levi of New York, for example, gives us a glimpse into the life of a Jewish peddler who was following the English army in the midst of battles in North America during the Seven Years’ War. In 1757, he managed to escape from the Indians, who massacred the British soldiers and their families after they surrendered to the French and retreated.21 Jews were not exempt from adaptation to a society whose economic success and way of life were based on the labor of Black slaves. For example, the rabbi of the Jews of Jamaica, Joshua Hezekiah de Cordova (1720–1797), owned slaves. For Meir Ben Joseph, who immigrated to America from the small community of Jever in northern Germany, Black people were solely merchandise.

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In a Yiddish letter from Reading, Pennsylvania, which bore a Hebrew date (Av 5522), he shared his daily concerns with his friend Michael Gratz. In the same breath as he implored him to be his guest on the Sabbath of Nah. amu, after the fast of the Ninth of Av (“For now we are very isolated”), he told him, “I might be able to sell my Negro slave for a profit. So, if a ship with Negroes or with [indentured] Germans arrives, please tell me, because I can’t manage without a servant woman.” Meir complained that “the servant woman I have now . . . is drunk all day, as much as she can obtain, and secondly she is wicked, so that my wife can’t say anything to her. She’s afraid of her.” He noted that a free Black man was courting her and wanted to buy her, and Meir wanted to get rid of her without losing money: “I want to sell her for at least a hundred-and-ten pounds, with her bastard, because I also bought the bastard.” The Jewish immigrant, who escaped from a community that, in the 1740s, was threatened with expulsion, adapted to the colonial view of white superiority. The historian of the Jews of the United States, Hasia Diner, explained that the success of the Jews in North America derived, among other things, from the racial gap that changed their inferior status as aliens in Europe: “They no longer bore the burden of being the stigmatized group whom others reviled and oppressed. As women and men considered among the privileged by virtue of their whiteness they enjoyed relative tolerance.”22 The challenge of preserving the tradition and imposing religious discipline had already confronted the Jewish leadership in Europe for several decades. However, this challenge grew in the New World, with its small communities and tolerant climate, as there was a desire to adopt local customs. In New York, for example, religious permissiveness such as failure to observe the Sabbath or the prohibitions of kashrut were regarded as delinquency so severe as to deny the right of membership in the Shearith Israel congregation.23 Great effort was invested in providing circumcisers and kosher food, and, when possible, in building synagogues. When the Jews of Newport began to raise funds to establish a synagogue, they addressed their brethren in New York in 1759 and explained the task the immigrants faced: “Great is our duty to train our children in the righteous way of the religion, and how bitter is the need of some of these children and their parents, who have no alternative but to be educated in a place where they will necessarily be left entirely ignorant of the knowledge of our holy and divine Torah, our customs, and our ways of worship.”24 The divided world of the Jews of Newport is manifest when, at the same time as they constructed the Jeshuat Israel synagogue, which was designed according to the messianic symbolism (the dimensions of the Temple) that characterized the Sephardi synagogues in London and Amsterdam, they also

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established a social club, where they could meet, play cards, dine, and drink wine. The bylaws warned that club matters must not be mixed in with synagogue business. The club was a secular sphere, and members were required to behave decently, as was proper in a public place in civil society, and not to curse or quarrel. The club was only open to Jews, showing, in William Pencak’s opinion, that “the Jews wanted total acceptance without total assimilation; they wanted to maintain a distinctive religion and culture while achieving equal status as Britons and later Americans.”25 Even in unprecedented pluralistic conditions, in comparison to the communities of Europe, the attainment of equality was not self-evident. Between 1761 and 1762, the assembly of the colony of Rhode Island rejected the request for citizenship of Aaron Lopez and Isaac Eliezer. Although both of them invoked their right according to the British Plantation Bill of 1740, as they had lived more than seven years in the colonies, the leaders of Rhode Island decided that they were not interested in granting full liberty and political rights to Jews.26 A minister from New Port, Ezra Stiles (1727–1795), justified this refusal in theological terms: it appeared that Providence was doing everything to prolong the suffering and discrimination of the Jews, so that they would not adapt, and their status as a separate group would not change. In his opinion, the Jew Bill of the previous decade also testified to that. Lopez was disappointed because even in the New World, the tension between Jews and Christians had not disappeared, but he was convinced that their rights should not be curtailed, and he did not give up his quest for equality. Within a few months, he made a similar request to the Massachusetts colony, where he met no opposition and immediately became a British citizen and subject of George III.27

Note s 1. Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. Avraham Bick (Jerusalem: Moreshet Jerusalem, 1979), 262–264. 2. Ibid., 248–268. 3. Emden, ‘Ets avot (Amsterdam: Unknown, 1752), ch. 5, Mishnah 21. 4. See John Hill, The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life (London: M. Cooper, 1750). 5. Pinchas Katzenllenbogen, Yesh manh.ilin (Jerusalem: Mahon Hatam Sofer, 1986), 54–55, 67–69, 111, 256–258, 317–319, 341–345. 6. Jacob Kimchi, Sheela teshuva (Altona: Aaron ben Eliyau Katz, 1760). See Charles Duschinsky, “Jacob Kimchi and Shalom Buzaglo,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 7 (1911–1914): 272–290.

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7. Israel Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, I (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990), 349–361, 403–406, 409–414. See Raphael Nathan Rabinovitz, Mamar ‘al hadpasat hatalmud (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1965), 118–121. 8. On the controversy of the Kann and Kulp families in Frankfurt, see Hashah. ar 12 (1884): 648–650; Mordecai Halevi Hurowitz, Rabanei Frankfurt (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1972), 95–110, 222–225; Isidor Kracauer, Die Kulp-Kannschen Wirren: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der jüdischen Gemeinde in Frankfurt a. M im XVIII. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1910); Kracauer, Geschichte der Juden in Frankfurt a.M, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1927), 178–216. 9. See Aron Freimann, “A frankfurter bah.urim lid fun 18ten y.h.,” YIVO Bletter 13 (1938): 345–353, and the Hebrew translation by Simh.a Assaf, Meqorot letoldot hah. inukh beyisrael, ed. Shmuel Glick (Jerusalem: JTS, 2002), 383–390. 10. See H. Voelcker, ed., Die Stadt Goethes: Frankfurt am Main im XVIII. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: H. Schaefer Verlag, 1932), 275–276; Amos Elon, Hameyased: avi shoshelet rotshild vetequfato (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1996), 24–26. 11. Teshu’at yisrael ‘al yedei ester, composed by the venerable Rabbi Saraval, facsimile of MS, n.d. MS EH47B7, Amsterdam, ‘Ets H.ayim; see Moshe Gorali, “Tirgum ‘ivri shel haoratorio ‘ester’ meet g. f. hendel, ma’ase yedei harav y. r. saraval,” Tatslil 2 (1962): 73–78; David Conway, Jewry in Music: Entry to the Profession from the Enlightenment to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 59. 12. Ephraim Luzzatto, Ele benei hane’urim (London: G. Richardson & S. Clark, 1768), 85. See David Mirsky, Efrayim luzzatto, h. ayav veyetsirato (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1994). 13. [No author], A Narrative of the Remarkable Affair between Mr. Simonds, The Polish Jew Merchant, and Mr. James Ashley, Merchant of Bread Street, London (London: S. Clay, 1752). 14. Proceedings on the King’s Commission of the Peace, held in the Old Bailey, 5, London, May 23, 1751. 15. Johann Jacob Bierbrauer, Beschreibung derer berüchtigten jüdischen Diebes-, Mörder- und Rauber-Banden . . . samt alle deren Criminale-Gerichten, bey vorkommenden Fällen, zum nützlichen Gebrauch (Kassel: Jeremias Estinne, 1758). 16. See Monika Richarz, “Jewish Social Mobility in Germany during the Time of Emancipation, 1790–1871,” The Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 20 (1975): 69–77. 17. Bierbrauer, Beschreibung derer berüchtigten jüdischen Diebes-, Mörder- und Rauber-Banden. 18. See William Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005); Eli Faber, A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654–1820 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992);

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Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654–2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 19. See Stanley F. Chyet, Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970); Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, ch. 3. 20. Jacob Marcus, Mavo letoldot yahadut ameriqa betequfat reshita (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1971), 169–171; Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), 141–143. 21. Marcus, Mavo letoldot yahadut ameriqa betequfat reshita, 164. 22. See Stanley Mirvis, “Joshua Hezkiah Decordova and A Rabbinic Counter-Enlightenment from Colonial Jamaica,” in Reappraisals and New Studies of the Modern Jewish Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer, ed. Brian M. Smolett and Christian Wiese (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 104–122, esp. 108; Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight (New York: NYU Press, 1998); Marcus, Mavo letoldot yahadut ameriqa betequfat reshita, 175–176; Jacob R. Marcus, American Jewry, Documents, Eighteenth Century (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1959), 358–360; Diner, Jews of the United States, 25–26. 23. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 24. Marcus, Mavo letoldot yahadut ameriqa betequfat reshita, 171–172; Laura Lebman, “Sephardic Sacred Space in Colonial America,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 13–41. 25. See Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 95–96. 26. See Faber, Time for Planting, 97–99. 27. See Chyet, Lopez of Newport, 37–40.

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“WE ARE ALL CITIZENS OF THE WORLD” The Jewish Question in the Age of the Philosophes

With his sensitive perceptions, Jacob Emden, who regarded himself as the defender of Judaism, was very strongly aware of the changes trending in the eighteenth century. Ultimately he discerned mainly what was happening among the elites. At midcentury, when he wrote his commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers pointing out the challenges to his generation, he took note of neither the Jewish criminals nor the emigrants to the New World. Beyond the Sabbatean enemy, the most dangerous of all, he pointed out the wealthy and fashionable, the libertines, and the religiously permissive as new and threatening figures. Emden attacked the wealthy elite who “eat and drink and party away their days, satisfying their instincts with laughter, frivolity, and adultery, denial, deceit, and filthy language, and all the ways of evil and destructive abominations, and they satisfy their appetites.” He dismissed the value of their support for Torah scholars as a hypocritical effort to atone for their deviance from the norms of religion and morality. His severe warnings against philosophy stand out in particular. In his view, the estrangement of philosophy from the world of Jewish knowledge and thought and its threat to faith led him, as a decidedly apprehensive conservative, to make a penetrating critical accounting with Maimonides. In his view, it was absolutely forbidden to study with non-Jews “and their books of heresy, as did Maimonides when he joined with them and studied philosophy and rationalism with them, with great application.” In general, he erected a high wall between Jews and non-Jews: “What is the connection of the false opinions of the nations to Mount Sinai, from which the Torah was given and from which hatred for the nations descended? What are their foreign opinions to us?”1

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E x pectation of Fu t u r e H a ppine ss: Enlightened Intell ect ua l s a n d Schol a r s In midcentury, when Emden rejected Maimonides, the philosopher, and marked out those ideal borders, sharply and with purism separating the cultures and isolating the Jews from “the opinions of the nations,” this was not merely an abstract principle. In Berlin, Moses Mendelssohn was taking up his position as the most prominent and exemplary Jewish philosopher of the eighteenth century. We have already seen how, during the Seven Years’ War, he attained the status of a scholar who could assist and benefit the community and how he took his first steps among the enlightened circles of Germany. In Mendelssohn’s world, unlike Emden’s, there was almost no echo of the powerful challenges that had broken out within the religion with the inundation of the mystical dimension. He made brief reference to it only about a decade after the Frankist sect had upset the equilibrium of Polish Jewry. A whole generation separated Emden and Mendelssohn, but not only did the two know about each other, they also corresponded, and they might even have met when Mendelssohn traveled to Hamburg, during the trip when he met his future wife, Fromet. In a letter of thanks to Emden, after he had read some of the polemical writings he had received from him, Mendelssohn praised his courage and his determination to oppose the Sabbateans. In near imitation, which concealed slight irony, Mendelssohn wrote to Emden in the same polemical style that characterized the rabbi from Altona: “Who like yourself in this orphaned generation erects fences and stands in the breach?. . . . Who will stand with us against the evildoers who speak ill of the Lord and revile the divine arrangements of Israel? Who will stand with us against the powerful actors who incite the heart of the man of Israel to deny the interpretations and traditions of the Sages, by whose mouths we live, were it not that the Lord illuminated the spirit of my master, whose heart is like a lion’s?” In Mendelssohn’s eyes, this was indeed a highly worthy struggle, both to protect the tradition against internal challenges and also so that good thinking would overcome the deviant interpretation of the religion. He supported Emden as the gatekeeper, who was assisting in his struggles, “so that their spirits will throb, and they will awaken from their slumber of folly.”2 Berlin was far from the world of the groups of religious enthusiasts, and Mendelssohn was already deeply immersed in his philosophical project. In contrast to Emden, for Mendelssohn, Maimonides was an anchor that stabilized and justified a rational picture of the world. Following in his footsteps, in a work written in 1762, Mendelssohn could claim the priority of natural reason. Mendelssohn bridged the gap between medieval philosophy and the challenges

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of his age, and, writing in Hebrew, he proposed a natural theology: “Man cannot attain conception of the highest philosophical ideas except by means of reasonable deduction and example, that is to say, by the natural and historical way, and not merely by the grace of the Endower of knowledge, as took place with the prophets, who were infused with the spirit of God and did not have to draw conclusion or use reason.”3 In his preference for philosophical discussion rather than prophetical inspiration, Mendelssohn was participating in the contemporary attack against religious enthusiasm. Without direct polemics, Mendelssohn set out his philosophical alternative in On Sentiments, the work through which he broke into the German Republic of Letters.4 In his investigation of aesthetics, the philosopher guided the way to no less than “the sources of pleasure.” He shared with his readers the moving feelings of elevation, which did not derive from religious ecstasy or the satisfaction of urges (“contemptible desires”), but rather from recognition of perfection, unity in multiplicity, and the harmony of nature and the fine arts. Nothing could equal the experience of the philosopher immersed in the study of nature and mankind: “What heavenly rapture will suddenly surprise you! In the numbing ecstasy you will scarcely be able to maintain your composure.” Mendelssohn did not dismiss the body. He acknowledged the physiology of the pleasure aroused by stimulation of the nerves and by enjoyment of wine, of a breeze in the heat of summer, and of warmth in the winter. But if reason did not moderate desire, the pleasure would merely be transitory, giving the body partial satisfaction, and there were contemptible sensory pleasures; after satisfying them, the sweetness ate into the bones.5 In 1755, when Jacob Frank crossed the border into Poland to lead the Sabbatean group in the anarchistic teaching of destroying the laws of religion and morality, and when, in Chmielnik, the Ba’al Shem was working with spells and frightening ceremonies to exorcise a dybbuk that had possessed a boy’s body, Mendelssohn group was inspired by Enlightenment, happiness and friendship. As if it were an epistolatory novel and not a philosophical inquiry, On Sentiments begins with an emotional expression of the affection that grew between the two philosophers, who are the spokesmen in this work. The friendship between Mendelssohn and Lessing is echoed, for Lessing introduced Mendelssohn to the enlightened circle in Berlin and saw to the printing of his early works: “how lucky I would be, if I could throw myself into the arms of my friend!”6 Nothing in On Sentiments betrays the author’s Jewish identity, nor is his name mentioned in it. The intended readership dwelled beyond the social and communal boundaries of Judaism. Mendelssohn wrote with great ardor about

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beauty, love, and the arts. He examined the feelings of compassion, and he mainly studied the means for attaining pleasure and joy. Music moved him with the harmony of its sounds. The theater impressed him with its power to stir up emotions and to arouse identification, and painting, with the mixture of colors, evoked “sensuous rapture, [and] the improvement of the state of our body can also hardly be denied.” Following Hogarth’s book, The Analysis of Beauty, which appeared in 1753, Mendelssohn praised the achievements of the painter’s aesthetic doctrine: “In Germany people are acquainted with the line of waves that our Hogarth has established for painters as the genuine of beauty, which imitate motion and imbue the drawing with magic, and manifestations of the harmony of colors.” This was, in his view, one of the great achievements of the eighteenth century. Thus, in music and painting, humanity is paving a new way to happiness, and soon it would make the world into a paradise. God was not absent, for only deep faith in the truth of religion can be a guarantee of hope for future happiness. However, such open and explicit attachment to the emotions, to the sentiments, to contemplation of nature, to listening to sounds, and to the desire for beauty was already part of the revolution of the individual who experiences the world directly and does not require intermediaries or religious interpretation.7 At midcentury, it was still difficult to identify many Jewish intellectuals who adopted these values and aspirations or who were recognized in the non-Jewish realm, but Mendelssohn was not unique in a career that crossed cultural and social borders. As noted, in the year that Mendelssohn’s On Sentiments appeared in Berlin, in Paris, Azulai met Jacob Rodrigues Pereira, who had developed sign language for the deaf and whose contribution to communication for the deaf had made a great impression on the king of France and on scientists there and in England. In Livorno, Angelo de Soria, a Jewish physician and graduate of the University of Pisa, wrote a memorandum proudly presenting medicine as a profession that promotes civil happiness. He emphasized his dual identification with the homeland of Tuscany and the Hebrew nation and his mobilization for the exalted values that were of “benefit to human society, which is the only happiness for mortals.”8 Moses Wolf (1715–1802), the son of the court Jew in the principality of Wied and a graduate of the universities of Duisburg and Halle, was a physician and a bon vivant in Bonn. He was regarded as an expert in innovative methods, served as the personal physician of archbishops and dukes, and was even summoned to Rome to treat the eye disease of Pope Clement XIII.9 Marcus Eliezer Bloch (1726–1793), who was raised in a poor family in Ansbach, completed medical studies at the University of Frankfurt on the Oder in 1762, at a relatively

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advanced age. As a physician (Mendelssohn’s personal doctor) and as a scientist in Berlin, he made a name for himself as an innovative researcher in aquatic animals and was invited to join scientific societies.10 In midcentury, Abraham Kisch (1728–1803), a graduate of the University of Halle, arrived in Berlin. He was born in Prague and was Mendelssohn’s Latin teacher. With self-confidence and awareness of his professional abilities, he asked Friedrich II not to discriminate against him and to allow him to defend his dissertation publicly in the ceremonial chamber. He had investigated tuberculosis, and when he moved to Breslau, the local authorities supported his claim that he had a right to practice his profession everywhere in Prussia and that “religious affiliation has nothing to do with medicine.”11 Isaac de Pinto (1717–1787) combined successful commercial business ventures in Amsterdam, his native city, with publications as an original theorist of the early modern economy. He belonged to one of the elite families of the Western Sephardic Diaspora in Europe, and he defined himself as a cosmopolitan zealot for humanity, though he also took on leadership positions in the Jewish community. He studied luxury as an economic and social problem, poverty in the Sephardic communities, and the flow of money in the financial world of his day. As a philosopher of the Enlightenment, Pinto built relationships with leading scholars, including Diderot, the editor of the Encyclopédie, and David Hume (1711–1776), the Scottish philosopher, both of whom he met on a visit to Paris. As we see below, he unsurprisingly did not find it hard to criticize Voltaire in a public debate and to challenge him in his double identity as a philosopher and a Jew.12 The scope of identities in the group of scholars on the seam between Jews and Christians was complex and sometimes surprising. In 1763, Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732–1817), the converted grandson of the rabbi of the Berlin community, Michel Chassid (1680–1728), was appointed professor of political science and economics in Vienna. When Joseph was only three, his father, Lipman Perlin, moved from his native city, Nikolsburg, Moravia, to Vienna and converted to Christianity with his three children. Sonnenfels served in the Austrian army and studied law at the university. As a prominent aristocrat, from an early age his life was connected with the academy, politics, and culture of Vienna. His political philosophy supported the absolutist regime that was moving toward modernization, and as a close advisor to Maria Theresa and a prolific author, he was among the promoters of reform in the country and one of the leaders of the Austrian Enlightenment.13 A similar conversion of a father and his children made a brilliant career possible for talented librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838). He was born as

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Emanuele Conagliano in Cenada, a town in the Venetian Republic. After his wife’s death, his father married a Catholic woman, and immediately afterward he converted with his three sons in 1763. Lorenzo was then fourteen years old, and, as with Sonnenfels, his new Christian identity afforded him many opportunities. In the autobiography that he wrote at the height of his career, he concealed his Jewish origins, blamed his father for neglecting his education, and pinned his success on his youthful thirst for knowledge and on his ability to read in Latin and Italian and write poetry. Educated for the priesthood, he was a professor of literature, as, in addition to the classical languages, he had also studied Hebrew. He lived a hedonistic, libertine life as a youth and was a friend of Casanova’s. In the 1780s, he had a deep influence on Viennese culture as a classicist and successful librettist, much in demand. Da Ponte wrote the libretti for operas by composers such as Antonio Salieri (1750–1825) as well as for three of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–1791) best-known operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte.14 Another crosser of borders was Christian scholar Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815), who gained the trust of many Jews. As a curious young man, he wandered among Christian and Jewish centers of learning in Germany, and, before being appointed as professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Bützow in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1760, he was given a certificate of rabbinical ordination. Tychsen was and remained a Lutheran, and he was even filled with missionary zeal to convert the Jews. However, thanks to the close connections he developed with rabbis and Jewish scholars and students, he was able to correspond with them in rabbinical Hebrew and gained expertise in Judaism: “our haver (colleague, Talmudic scholar) Tychsen moved from a distant land and wandered from his home, constantly educating himself, and moving from one yeshiva to another, and he studied with and ‘poured water on the hands of ’ the great scholars of our people, engaging in the work of heaven” in fact, he claimed to have been recognized as a Torah scholar. In 1759, Rabbi Moshe Tsevi Lifschitz, from the community of Kirchheim, awarded him the rabbinical title of h.aver. If the certificate of ordination that he published is authentic, there was no doubt about his identification as a Christian: “Although he is not, for our many sins, circumcised, he has already drunk water from the deep wells of the wisdom of our Sages, in accordance with the divine commandment, ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ I placed it on my heart to crown him and honor him and ordain him with this ordination of the sages, for this is the Torah, and this is its reward from heaven, to be called by the title of H.aver Rabbi Tychsen in every holy matter.” With the humanistic justification that applies the obligation to love even someone who is not a Jew, in this

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unique instance Rabbi Lifschitz broke through the interreligious barriers. This hybrid identity, in which the Orientalist of the German academy maintained intimate contact with religious Jewish culture, going so far as ordination, was indeed exceptional, taking the scope of opportunity within the scholarly world to an extreme.15

“I Y e a r ned to K now th e Path to Light”: Da Costa, Lyons, Gu m pertz, a n d M en del ssohn The Jew with the highest status in the scientific and learned community in Europe starting in midcentury, aside from Mendelssohn, was without a doubt Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717–1791) of London, an expert in minerals, shells, and fossils. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Science at the age of thirty, and in 1763, he was appointed its secretary and librarian. His rich and unique collections, his research and publication, his membership in scientific organizations, and the central place he took in the networks of communications and correspondence gave him a place in the scientific leadership of England. As an ambitious and competitive man of the eighteenth century, da Costa was not modest about his abilities and expressed pride in his achievements. In a letter of 1761, he wrote that he was diligently pursuing his research in natural history and that he was quite well-known and respected among the lovers of science.16 This was not mere boasting. When his book, A Natural History of Fossils, appeared in 1757, Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the famous author of Systema Naturae, praised it highly: “Your unequalled knowledge and rare erudition aroused great respect and honor here.” Also, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), who had gained renown in the scientific community with his Histoire naturelle, praised da Costa among the scientists of Paris.17 Like other members of his aristocratic Sephardi family, who had amassed wealth through trade in diamonds and stock, he, too, penetrated deep into English society, and he knocked down one of its walls when he married a Christian woman. Nevertheless, he did not conceal his Jewish identity, nor did he convert, as did, for example, Kitty, his cousin, following the lawsuit filed against her by her brother, Philip, in the 1730s for breaking her promise to marry him. His scientific colleagues regarded him as an expert in Judaism, and he willingly shared his knowledge with them. When he was asked, for example, to translate medieval documents from Hebrew, he said he would consult “our rabbis.”18 In 1762, da Costa was involved in the combined effort of theologians, scholars in the Royal Society, and members of the Sephardic community of London

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to seek out the Jews of China. The curiosity of the scientists to discover mysterious tribes, the hope that among those Jews would be found holy Scripture in their earliest, original form, the excitement about expanding the known Jewish universe, and the expectation of the ingathering of exiles and a messianic future were made clear in a Hebrew letter sent by Rabbi Isaac Nieto to “our brethren, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the disciples of Moses, the man of God, who live in the land of China, in the Far East,” in the name of “your brethren who dwell in the land of England.” Tourists and missionaries had brought rumors of the existence of a Jewish community in China, Nieto wrote, and the scientists wished to know the truth. Nieto told the recipients of the letter that they were not alone in the world and that many communities existed “in every known settlement . . . and above all in this country is the city called London in the land of England, where we dwell in tranquility and security under the rule of the great and mighty King George III.” A questionnaire was appended to this letter to China to clarify to what degree the Jews there did belong to a single nation, enabling the senders to gain an impression of the identification papers, as it were, of the Jews of the mid-eighteenth century. The Jews of London and the learned asked such questions as: When did you get to China? Are you descended from the Ten Lost Tribes? Are you in contact with other communities in the Far East? Do you have a Torah Scroll and the other books of the prophets in the form that we possess? Are you familiar with the holidays that we celebrate, especially Hanukkah and Purim, which are not mentioned in the Bible? Do you also believe in the same principles, beginning with a single God who created the world and gave the Torah from heaven, as well as belief in the world to come and hopes for the messiah, “who will rebuild the Temple and restore the Jews as in ancient times”?19 While da Costa’s main interest was to enrich knowledge about the cultures of the world, his assistance in locating the Jews of China connected him more strongly to his origins. Although he was not punctilious about religious observance, his Christian colleagues were well aware of various prohibitions. Thus, for example, in an invitation that he received to stay in the home of the Duke of Richmond, he was assured that his restrictions would be taken into consideration and that he would be served meals in the spirit of tolerance and pluralistic recognition of cultural relativism: “We have not had a single dinner without plenty of what the strictest Laws of Moses would allow you, though at the same time we have eat barbecued shols, and other abominations to your nation; but we are all citizens of the world, and see different customs and different tastes without dislike or prejudice, as we do different names and colours.”20

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His brilliant career was tarnished by his arrest in 1767 for embezzling funds of the Royal Society, but even then, da Costa was not shunned among scholars, though he was called “the little Jew” by his detractors, and admiration for him was not lessened. Ten years later, Mendelssohn presented da Costa as a successful example of participation in the Republic of Letters and the proper separation of his religion and origins from his proven accomplishments. Mendelssohn himself did not attain this, as, after he was elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, he was not allowed to join. With thundering silence, the king ignored his request to approve the philosopher’s admission to the ranks of the academy.21 In contrast, the expert in fossils from London crossed many boundaries without his Jewish identity standing in the way, but when he wished to receive a senior position in the British Museum, which had just been founded, da Costa was rejected because the positions were reserved for Anglicans alone.22 No less frustrated by the gap between his high rank as a scientist and his restricted status as a Jew was mathematician, botanist, and astronomer Israel Lyons (1739–1775). A self-educated son of an immigrant from Poland, he chose to settle in the heart of the academic community of Cambridge University and make his living as a Hebrew teacher. He became a recognized and respected scholar and a member of the networks of the most senior scientists in England. When he was nineteen, he astounded the community with the publication of his book on infinitesimals, Treatise of Fluxions (1758), to which dozens of professors, members of the Royal Academy, Sephardi Jews from the elite in London, and even Rabbi Isaac Nieto subscribed before its publication. Lyons went on to specialize in botany and became known as a leader in the field. Joseph Banks (1743–1820), who was the botanist on Captain Cook’s expedition and later became the president of the Royal Academy, was a student in Oxford in 1764 when he invited Lyons to give a series of lectures to train him and another sixty students. After that, Banks became Lyons’s patron. However, his status remained unstable, as he was on the margins of the world of science without an academic post. He and his father were already distant from the few Jews of Cambridge, and when his father died, the family even asked to have him buried in a church. The Jews of Cambridge did not regard him as one of them, though he did not convert, and, as Lynn Glyn defined him, “His career reflects the insecurity of a peripheral world in which clever professionals like himself were forced to accept roles in which their abilities merely shored up the achievements of more privileged individuals, without gaining the status or wider recognition of those whom they assisted.” In his early thirties, Lyons apparently already despaired about his future; the number of students who sought his guidance decreased, his fame plummeted, and he found solace in

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heavy drinking. A recommendation from Banks and other scientists rescued him from the crisis, and Lyons was appointed as the astronomer to an expedition that left for the North Pole in 1773. Once again his contribution to scientific research was recognized, and his self-image improved considerably. Upon his return, he apparently decided to cross the lines. Lyons married a Christian woman and settled in London.23 Powerful desire to penetrate the learned circles of London throbbed in the heart of Dr. Aaron Gumpertz (1723–1769) of Berlin. One of his most exciting dreams was fulfilled on a visit to London in the autumn of 1751. Da Costa took him under his wing and on several occasions invited him to meetings of the Royal Society as his personal guest. Sponsored by da Costa, whom he admired, he became acquainted with English scientists, and he later used this connection to meet other learned men in his travels in Europe and to introduce himself, for example, as the bridge between the Royal Society and Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), who was then living in Berlin.24 In a short autobiography included in the introduction to his Hebrew work, Essay on Science, he displayed his total devotion to science, even sacrificing himself. He reported that he was raised surrounded by books in a wealthy home, that his father saw to his education, and that private tutors enriched his knowledge from an early age. His curiosity was boundless. “I yearned to know the path to light,” he wrote, and because of his “thirst for research” and his marveling at the world of nature and man, he read ceaselessly and “studied the languages known in countries such as Latin, French, English, Greek, and the like.” Although entrusting traditional education to old-fashioned teachers seemed like an unforgivable fault to him, despite his criticism, he decided not to be concerned with reform of the whole community, but with his personal education alone.25 Gumpertz’s visit to da Costa in London was the start of the enthusiastic twenty-eight-year-old’s European journey. He had just submitted his dissertation, De temperamentis, to the university of Frankfurt on the Oder and was a doctor of medicine. He went on to meet scholars in Holland and France, as he recounted in eloquent, rhymed Hebrew prose, again expressing the eager pursuit of knowledge, which so excited him: “I was not tranquil nor did I rest in gathering handfuls of the fruits of authors and books, and I went down to the sea in ships, and I journeyed, and I came and was directed toward cities, where the greatest sages sat on thrones, and people flocked to them, those thirsty to hear words of truth, and I was bound to them, and I sat in the dust of their feet.” Upon his return to Berlin, Gumpertz practiced medicine for several years and continued to frequent Enlightenment circles. He was the first Jew to participate as a guest in a meeting of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences.

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He made friends with Lessing and joined in the coffeehouse meetings among intellectuals and in the Montagsklub (the Monday club), which was headed by publisher Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811).26 In the beginning of the summer of 1753, a modest booklet appeared in Berlin that called on Germany to grant citizenship to the Jews for the first time. This was one of the rare responses to the Jew Bill—which was then being debated in Parliament—outside of England. Behind the author’s pseudonym, Israel Levi, apparently stood ambitious scholar Aaron Gumpertz. In an open letter from “the Jew” to “the philosopher,” he inaugurated early discourse on emancipation under the inspiration of the Jew Bill, which he had learned about from news stories that appeared in the French and Dutch press. The demand of the rulers of the German states to extend civil rights to the Jews and afford them new possibilities for earning their living was supported both by the mercantilist economic principle of the benefit for the state of the increase in active and productive citizens who would contribute to the state’s prosperity and power and by the humanistic principle, which called for the ethical treatment of all human beings. Like Tolland, Lessing, and Montesquieu before him, “the Jew” understood that such a political move would require overcoming prejudices against the Jews in Europe. However, the philosopher certainly would know how to overcome differences in faith, because tolerance alone guided him. Gumpertz’s radical vision as expressed in this political pamphlet was imbued with faith that in the mid-eighteenth century, a historic turning was taking place. He asserted that in the “enlightened times” they were living in, rulers and philosophers were being called on to acknowledge that the Jews had been oppressed for centuries, not because of their negative traits but as a consequence of cruel religious fanaticism. When the injustice was corrected and the Jewish nation, which until then had lived on the margins, was no longer kept apart from the general welfare, it would be clear that there should be no discrimination between Jews and Christians and that, as human beings, everyone was equal in the characteristics of body and soul. The philosopher warmly accepted these arguments of the Jew and added that in Holland and England, the lives of many Jews were no longer different from their neighbors’, and he agreed that oppression of the Jews was unjust. Like Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, the philosopher also cried out in the name of the Jews: “Evil Christians, stop persecuting us!” As a practical solution, the expectation was mutual: “Let us hope that in the end the Jews will improve their customs, so that they will be less despised by the Christians,” and the path to their rights would no longer encounter opposition.27

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This pamphlet was published in Berlin three years after Friedrich II’s General Privilege and provided the learned public of Germany with a counterproposal advocating the emancipation of the Jews and their naturalization. It was not heeded in the royal palace, nor did it arouse debate and discussion. At most, it reported to German readers about the Jew Bill, which was discussed in the English Parliament. Its importance lay in the public protest, which was expressed not only by Gumpertz’s lone voice, but also by a small circle of enlightened young people, both Jews and Christians. The one who had the pamphlet published in the printing house of Christian Wilhelm Voss was Lessing, and most likely the encounter between the Jew, Gumpertz, and the philosopher, Lessing, is what gave rise to it. The common foundation provided by the consciousness of “enlightened times” nourished the spirit of criticism against prejudices, fanaticism, and the darkness of European history, which made the status of the Jews a touchstone of the Enlightenment for them. A third member of this circle was Moses Mendelssohn, who was just taking his first steps as a philosopher, with the guidance of Gumpertz and Lessing. In 1754, he entered the public sphere with an anonymous letter, which Lessing had published. The young Mendelssohn’s protest was far more painful than that of Gumpertz. It was as if his entire world was shattered and reality had slapped him in the face when he encountered prejudice against the Jews in the learned community as well. A critical article by theologian Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) on Lessing’s play, The Jews, argued that the character of the Jewish traveler, with his positive traits, was unrealistic and thus detracted from enjoyment of the play. Lessing and Mendelssohn immediately responded on the pages of the Theatralische Bibliothek, which was published in Berlin in Voss’s printing house, where Gumpertz’s pamphlet had been published. Writing in disappointment, Lessing stated that the intention of his play was to weaken the prejudice that reduced the Jews to sub-humanity. The argument that the play was unrealistic was refuted, as Lessing stated that he himself knew Jews with excellent qualities such as those, and as proof, he presented a letter from one of them anonymously. The response to Michaelis was the open and emotional protest of a Jewish philosopher against the persistence of prejudice against his people. He was offended and blushed with shame, finding it hard to believe: “What a humiliation this is for our oppressed nation! What great contempt!” Mendelssohn’s indignant response was no less than a landmark in the fundamental and unprecedented change in the self-image of Jews and what was expected of them by the world in which they lived as a minority. Only deep identification with the humanistic discourse of the Enlightenment and intimate acquaintance with Christian scholars and philosophers could have aroused

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expectations for a positive revolution in the attitude toward the Jews, and when these were not fulfilled, it led to great disappointment. It would be difficult and perhaps impossible to uproot the contemptible images from the lower classes, but “from learned men, I would have expected a more decent judgment.” How could it be, he asked in frustration, “that we continue to be oppressed, that, among free citizens, we live under continued restrictions?” The insult was not only against the Jews, but against human dignity. Thus, “what humiliation this is for the human race!” If someone who knew nothing about the contempt in which the Jews were held read this play of Lessing’s, Mendelssohn noted sarcastically, “he would think to himself, behold, these good people have finally come to discover that the Jews are also human beings.”28 A long time would pass before Mendelssohn was again constrained to discuss this politics of shame and cope with the challenges that painfully contradicted the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, however, his optimism increased, and the backing he received from Gumpertz and Lessing certainly reinforced his self-confidence. In 1755, he initiated the publication of Qohelet musar (Preacher of Morality), the first and unique Hebrew periodical in the early Jewish culture of the Enlightenment. Only two issues were printed in Berlin, in imitation of the ethical weeklies that had appeared early in the century in England and Germany. It reported that behind this new event, which joined together a community of writers and readers, stood a society of good friends. This was not a Holy Society like those established by Kabbalists and Hasidim, but a fellowship of Jewish scholars who in fact challenged the rabbinical elite.29 Mendelssohn joined forces with his less well-known acquaintance, Tobias Bock, to present an alternative to traditional ethical works and to offer an enlightened and inviting picture of the world. The philosopher in Qohelet musar demonstrated how far he went in paving new ways, although his critique remained moderate and was framed in various strata of Jewish sources, including the Talmud and Maimonides. The authors’ identity was disguised and only revealed years afterward, when Isaac Euchel (1756–1804), the enthusiastic founder of the Haskalah Movement in the 1780s and the editor of the far more developed Hebrew periodical, Hameasef, received this text from Mendelssohn for republication. In the margins of the copy of Qohelet musar that was owned by Solomon Dubno (1738–1813), a tutor in Mendelssohn’s home during the 1770s, is written: “This pamphlet was written by two men highly learned in Torah, fearers of God, men of truth, his excellency the famous sage, our teacher and rabbi Moses Dessau, may his light shine, and his friend, the outstanding sage, our teacher and rabbi Tobias of blessed memory, and this was in the days of their youth, and their intention with this was to arouse the sleepers and awaken the slumbering from their slumber and the sleep of that time.”30

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In the vision of the future espoused by this early and exceptional Hebrew periodical from the mid-eighteenth century, all of Jewish society was invited to reexamine their life and to think about their distance from nature. Man was the crown of creation, and the Jews, like all human beings, were entitled to take pleasure in the world, to submit themselves to nature with all their senses, to be excited by beauty, to breathe and smell, and mainly to open wide their eyes to contemplate the marvelous natural order, which the Creator of the world had established, with His grace as the greatest architect of all. This was a philosophical text in Hebrew that translated Mendelssohn’s theory of aesthetics as presented in On Sentiments. It conveyed the ideas of optimistic humanism as expressed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Alexander Pope (1688–1744), Christian Wolff (1679–1754), and others. Torah scholars were called on not only to plumb the depths of the Halakha or to delve deeply into the intentions of an authoritative, holy text, but to express amazement at what they saw and to set free the emotions aroused by the senses. The command “to enjoy all the delights of nature” was a fundamental value in human life, and by means of delicately erotic courtship images Qohelet musar exhorted: “Raise your eyes and see the whole plain around you growing beautiful for you like the bride of your youth, the gazelle of love, who ‘painted her face’ [2 Kings 9:30] and goes out in her ornaments toward him whom her soul loves.” The social criticism it voiced reproved the wealthy who showed no compassion and closed their hearts to the distress of the weak, and it mainly warned against sanctimonious hypocrites who pretended to fear heaven.31 Man, “the chosen one of the living,” endowed with exalted ethical traits, is the hero of Qohelet musar. This moral sermon of the Enlightenment drives its readers out of the House of Study and urges them to lower their gaze from heaven to the earth, to the world of the senses, which is indeed the marvelous creation of God but is also the arena for the earthly activities of the independent human being; it is an inviting, exciting, moving, and seductive world. However, Mendelssohn acquired neither fame in the community of the learned nor status in the Jewish community with Qohelet musar, and if he hoped that it would effect change, those hopes were not rewarded. He had attributed farreaching importance to Qohelet musar as a wake-up call to bring Jewish culture into the modern age, and the gap between vision and reality remained huge. The ethical weekly in Hebrew remained a brief episode. According to Euchel, it aroused opposition within the community, and Mendelssohn and his friend were silenced.32 Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the historical significance of the plan for cultural change, even though it failed to influence the people of its

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time. Qohelet musar signaled the direction of the cultural revolution by the very appearance of a new medium of communications; it was a weekly that offered a platform for public discussion beyond the borders of the rabbinical elite and the community leadership, and it painted a surprising picture of the world. Qohelet musar also revealed for the first time the pretensions of the Maskilic author to enter the Jewish public sphere as a speaker and to create a community that already existed in European society but had not yet arisen in the Jewish world: a readership capable of forming public opinion. At the same time, this Jewish ethical weekly offered a solicitous alternative to the traditional preachers, who used to inspire dread. In Hebrew, but mainly in German, the young Mendelssohn represented the new era of the philosophers. He was an accepted member of the Republic of Letters, which expanded far beyond the boundaries of Berlin for him as well. In his Philosophical Writings, published anonymously in 1761 in the Voss printing house in Berlin, he quoted from the ethical weeklies edited by Joseph Addison in England, frequently praised William Hogarth’s pictures and etchings and his aesthetic doctrine, and disputed with Rousseau (“the great master”), defending Leibniz’s optimistic doctrine against Voltaire’s critique in Candide (“the most biting satire of our German doctrine of the best of all possible worlds”).33 In the dozens of letters he sent to his betrothed in Hamburg, in parallel with the prolific burst of his writings, he nurtured—with irony and also with quite a bit of pride—his identity as a philosopher in love. He sent Fromet a copy of Rousseau’s successful epistolatory novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, which had just appeared and suited Mendelssohn’s romantic mood. However, when he was told that she was eagerly learning languages and constantly and diligently reading, he did not hesitate to insist on the gender barrier that separated them. He scolded her in affable panic.34 The foundation that he shared in the world of learned men was already broad enough so that two years later, in 1763, Mendelssohn was able to compete successfully against Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), write a work that won the first prize in a contest of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, and speak with self-confidence in the name of modern philosophers. In his essay entitled On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences, he also formulated his belief in reason, which he said made it possible to attain truth, and he praised the superiority of advanced thought in the Age of Enlightenment over the ancient thought of the “dark centuries.” He pointed out the subversive and even political trend led by the philosophers of his time. Mendelssohn proclaimed that philosophy must combat superstitions and prejudices, which the human race had made habitual, finding its happiness in them. Philosophy disturbed tranquility and stability,

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and its purpose was “to remove illusions” with its deep excavations. Philosophy could only exist in an environment of freedom, by listening to various voices without silencing them: “Anyone who gripes about this freedom cultivates despotic intentions and is a dangerous citizen in the republic of philosophy.”35 The “anger of the envious” that raged against Qohelet musar in the Berlin community was felt by others in this republic when the enemies of the Enlightenment, especially in France, labeled printed books as forbidden literature, tightened censorship, and persecuted the philosophers. In 1762, after the appearance of The Social Contract and Emile, Rousseau fled from France to the Berne region in Switzerland to avoid losing his liberty. In Paris and Geneva, his books were condemned to be burned, and a warrant for his arrest was issued. On June 11, in Paris, by order of the Parliament, copies of Emile were ceremonially burned.36 Voltaire, Rousseau’s philosophical colleague and bitter rival, was already experienced in flight. In his place of refuge near the Swiss border, he was relatively protected. His Treatise on Tolerance, published in early 1763, was smuggled into France and confiscated, although in the royal palace it was read with sympathy (for example, by Madame de Pompadour).37 The modest Qohelet musar was significant in the establishment of early Jewish Enlightenment, despite its marginal influence. “Terrible alarm bells” rang in France and elsewhere in Europe when several other works were published, intensifying more than ever the protest of the philosophers.

“M a n Is Bor n Fr e e”: Rousse au, Volta ir e, a n d de Pinto With the very opening sentence of The Social Contract, the philosopher calls for liberation from repressive and restrictive regimes: “MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau’s far-reaching vision and his solution for revoking the machinery of power of the absolutist state by means of democratic communities took the idea of the covenant as far as it would go: the agreement by which individuals surrender their natural rights to the state, which is the sum total of its citizens, acting in its government and decision-making. According to the model he proposed, the individual, with personal interests, is incorporated into what he called “the general will,” whose power is in “its common identity, its life and its will.” Liberty and equality are preserved in this transition from the state of nature to that of civil society, when “natural liberty” is converted into “covenantal liberty,” becoming “common liberty.” The collective self is the sovereign. The political criticism implied here is so absolute that there is hardly any chapter in the work that does not contain

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rebellious tendencies. As if this were not enough, in the eighth chapter of the fourth book, The Social Contract calls for the establishment of a civil religion by the state based on decidedly deistic principles. A citizen who claims that there is no salvation outside of the church is to be banished from the state, because “tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship.”38 No less subversive was the voice emerging from the hundreds of pages of Emile, in which Rousseau presented his innovative system of humanistic education. He presented his book as a study of the human condition and a guide for the attainment of happiness. “Life is the trade I would teach him. When he leaves me, I grant you, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man.” According to Rousseau, education must prepare the child for a natural life of freedom. He must be independent, resist dangers, harden his body, know how to play and be joyous, wear garments that do not press upon the body, not repress his desires, and overcome prejudices. The only book appropriate for him is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, which shows how a single person can survive by his own powers. Love and sexuality have a central place in an adolescent’s life, and the teacher finds Sophie as a partner for him, instructing him in a doctrine of gender that emphasizes woman’s inferiority, her dependence on men, her obedience, and her duties. Like Mendelssohn, Rousseau did not believe that women were worthy of equal membership in the philosophical community. “The Creed of a Savoyard Priest,” which is included in the fourth part of Emile, particularly incensed Rousseau’s conservative persecutors, who were fearful for the old order and the authority of religion and the Church. Natural education included natural religion: “Had they listened only to what God says in the heart of man, there would have been but one religion upon earth.” Revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the priesthood are rejected out of hand, because “the love of truth is my only philosophy.”39 Like Voltaire and the English deists, Rousseau spoke out bluntly against the image of a zealous and angry God, “hating men, a God of war and battles,” which, in his opinion, Judaism and Christianity bequeathed to mankind. Reason, by contrast, acting on its own, reveals a merciful and compassionate God, and therefore “Your God is not ours. He who begins by selecting a chosen people, and proscribing the rest of mankind, is not our common father.” After all, “twothirds of mankind are neither Jews, Mahometans, nor Christians; and how many millions of men have never heard the name of Moses, Jesus Christ, or Mahomet?” At the same time, Rousseau asks the readers of Emile to acknowledge the suffering they have inflicted on the Jews in the name of religious zealotry. “These unhappy people feel that they are in our power,” he writes in

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the name of the Savoyard Priest. “The tyranny they have suffered makes them timid.” Religious truth is relative. “At the Sorbonne it is plain that the Messianic prophecies refer to Jesus Christ. Among the rabbis of Amsterdam it is just as clear that they have nothing to do with him.” Perhaps, so that it might be possible to know what the Jews think, a new situation of liberty is needed: “I do not think I have ever heard the arguments of the Jews as to why they should not have a free state, schools and universities, where they can speak and argue without danger. Then alone can we know what they have to say.”40 The sentence that begins Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance was meant to mobilize public opinion against a miscarriage of justice, which, in Voltaire’s view, revealed the dangers of religious zealotry and its far-reaching consequences so that no human being could remain indifferent: “The murder of [Jean] Calas, sanctioned by the sword of justice on March 9, 1762, in the city of Toulouse, is one of the most extraordinary events to claim the attention of both our age and of posterity.” This treatise was one of the high points in Voltaire’s great protest against the injustice committed against the head of a Protestant family, a merchant in his sixties and the owner of a textile store who was accused of murdering his eldest son, Marc Antoine, to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. Calas, his wife, and his children were arrested, and he was condemned to death. He was tortured on the wheel and died, insisting on his innocence. Voltaire waged a public struggle after he was shocked to learn that it was a Catholic plot and that the son, who suffered from depression, hanged himself. Prejudice, ignorance, and religious fanaticism had destroyed a decent man and his family. The Calas affair was a huge test for human beings as such: “The abuse of the most holy religion has resulted in a terrible crime. It is therefore in the interest of mankind to examine whether the true religious spirit is more consistent with charity or with cruelty.” The affair in Toulouse enabled Voltaire to focus his criticism of religion even further. “The ‘law of intolerance’ is absurd and barbaric,” he wrote, whereas religion was supposed to advance happiness. “It would be the height of folly to bring all all men to think the alike on matters of metaphysics.”41 With this treatise of 1763 and many letters that he sent, Voltaire tried to organize a public movement to correct the injustice that had been done to Calas. His protest addressed the heart and asked for mercy and identification with suffering, spread shame, and spoke to the human conscience. In a letter to a friend, he wrote that since the massacre of the Huguenots by the Catholics on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, nothing so humiliating for the human race had taken place. He asked his friend to spread the protest as much as possible, to shout it abroad and to convince others to shout. France, bloodied at the end of

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the Seven Years’ War, was in distress on the battlefield, and the treasury was depleted. Terrible things were happening “in our century,” and the Calas affair cast shame on Europe. Reason was advancing slowly, and the roots of prejudice were deep. Voltaire did not expect to see the fruits of his efforts, but he consoled himself that the seed he had sown would sprout one day. Indeed, the absolutist regime was not indifferent to his protest, and in this case public opinion had on influence on it. In a burst of optimism, Voltaire proclaimed that humanity existed and that people were not such evil bullies as they were said to be. The royal council in Paris accepted the appeal, and the queen invited Calas’s widow, who had received much sympathy, to her palace in Versailles. A second trial reexamined the proceedings that had taken place in Toulouse, and in March 1765, the injustice was acknowledged, the condemnation was rescinded, and Calas was exonerated.42 Katherine II wrote to Voltaire on July 6, 1766, with great admiration that to be the defender of the human race and protect the innocent and oppressed meant to become an immortal.43 In the Treatise on Tolerance, too, the Jews were included among the groups worthy of compensatory policy that would undo the effects of historical discrimination. Like Mendelssohn, Voltaire believed that the Jews were a test case for humanity and that their persecution was shameful. France should learn from Germany, England, and Holland because “religious differences present no problem today in those countries. The Jew, the Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Anabaptist, the Socinian, the Mennonite, the Moravian, and many others, live there as brothers and contribute equally to the good of society.” This statement, especially with regard to Germany, was not an accurate reflection of reality and ignored the civil oppression that insulted Mendelssohn so deeply. However, Voltaire’s vision of tolerance brooked no exceptions: “We ought to regard every man as our brother. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman, my brother? The Jew and the Siamese? Yes, assuredly, for are we not all children of the same Fathere and creatures of the same God?” The Bible provided proof that the Jews were not commanded to persecute other religions and that God tolerated them. Although quite a bit of the ancient world of the Jews was repugnant, “in the fog of this long and frightful barbarism, one may always discern rays of universal tolerance.”44 This last remark once again betrays Voltaire’s complex attitude toward Judaism and the Jews. With what appears to be an absolute contradiction of his struggle for tolerance and his revulsion for the persecution of the Jews, throughout his writings, Voltaire scattered comments and images that presented them as one of the most despicable nations of the human race. With his witty rhetoric in the English Letters in the 1720s, he had already developed and

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intensified his deistic critique of the stories in the Bible. A few years before the Calas affair, he consolidated his historical picture of the Jews and the negative characteristics embedded in them in a broad and comprehensive article, “Jews,” which was published in early 1756 in the edition of his collected works. Eight years later, it was included in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764). Writing as a historian, Voltaire presented once again the metamorphoses of the Jews, saying, “It is certain that the Jewish nation is the most singular that the world has ever seen; and although, in a political view, the most contemptible of all.” The Bible offers a troubling saga of plundering, massacres, cruelty, blind obedience to a merciless god, human sacrifice (Jephthah’s daughter), and civil wars. The Jews’ contribution to humanity was marginal, and there were never scientists or philosophers among them. “From this short summary it results that the Hebrews have ever been vagrants, or robbers, or slaves, or seditious. They are still vagabonds upon the earth, and abhorred by men, yet affirming that heaven and earth and all mankind were created for them alone.” The historical chapters of “Jews” ends with a dark vision of their collective nature: the Jewish nation is an ignorant and savage one, in whom, for a long time, despicable avarice and the most disgusting superstition have been joined together along with harsh hatred of all the other nations, which would have tolerated them. Nevertheless, these characteristics need not make their enemies into barbarians, and they shouldn’t be burned at the stake.45 What is the meaning of the hostility evinced by the high priest of tolerance? Could it be that he was unable to free himself from the views inculcated in him by his Catholic education? Did the financial losses he underwent in business disputes with Jews, especially the diamond merchant, Abraham Hirschl, when he was staying in the palace of the king of Prussia, make him hate the Jews? Or was his critique of the Jews a stepping-stone in a larger program? His goal was to undermine the Church, which was based on the idea of revelation in the Bible, and this required deprecating the Jewish people by negating the value of their culture and their character.46 “Jews” shows that Voltaire, who warned against prejudices, subscribed to some of the negative opinions prevalent in European culture while at the same time joining his voice to those who demanded the application of humanistic principles to the Jews and cessation of their persecution. “Jews” did not seek to mount a campaign against the Jews; it was yet another link in Voltaire’s tireless efforts to change the Judeo-Christian picture of the world from top to bottom. Like the English deists, he believed that protest against the biblical God and revulsion at the “barbaric” acts described in Scripture would make it possible to educate mankind in humanism. His critical project sought to undermine sacred history, and in the case of the Jews as well,

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the task was to propose an alternative, secular history (without recourse to the hidden ways of Providence) that would present an image reflecting everything from which mankind must free itself: “We have here to do only with events purely historical, wholly apart from the divine concurrence and the miracles which God, for so long a time, vouchsafed to work in this people’s favor.” The case of the Jews was important to philosophy because it made it possible to separate unethical, inhuman behavior from the religious narrative that justifies injustices in the name of God. Thus, paradoxically, Voltaire’s harsh criticism of Judaism and the Jews was part of his campaign for religious toleration and humanist ethics.47 Even though some Jews of the time accepted this interpretation, it did not at all soften the feeling of indignation, and they asked: You, Voltaire, say that you don’t burn people at the stake? But you can also burn them by means of the pen, and that fire is even more frightening, because its effects are visible in following generations. You, Voltaire, speak in the name of tolerance? But what can be expected of the ignorance and savage multitude, who are determined to destroy this miserable people, if these horrible prejudices are confirmed by the greatest genius of the Enlightenment? Besides, is there a worse fault than to slander a whole people with such an unfounded generalization? Is it possible to accuse an entire nation? Can an entire nation be accomplices in a crime? The questions paraphrased above were fired at Voltaire in Isaac de Pinto’s insulted and pained response in his apology for the Jewish people in his Apologie, published in 1762. De Pinto, as we have seen, was a member of the learned community of Europe, and specifically for that reason, he felt so frustrated when the philosopher whom he admired (he remarked that he had had the honor of seeing Voltaire when he was young, and since then he had learned from Voltaire’s books, which always gave him great pleasure) attacked the nation of which he was a member and which he had the duty of defending. Like Mendelssohn, who had been so angry at Michaelis seven years previously for denying that there were virtuous and courteous Jews, de Pinto also expected eighteenth-century philosophers to uproot their prejudices against the Jews. If they did not do so, it was to be feared that people would rely on his authority to persecute the Jews, who were very miserable in any event. Although the response was apparently commissioned by the leaders of the Bordeaux community, Apologie was written as part of the inner discourse within enlightened society, in which Voltaire and de Pinto were in the same camp. De Pinto called on Voltaire to adhere to the principles of toleration and free himself from prejudices when he came to judge the Jews. By means of their shared beliefs, he sought to convince him that religious and ethnic identity were less significant

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than shared membership in the human race, that it was wrong to accuse the Jews in the present of what their ancestors had done in the distant past, that he could not ignore their scientific and literary achievements, and that he must admire those who remained loyal, with nobility of soul, to a religion that everyone persecuted and denigrated.48 More than anything, de Pinto’s deep identification with Voltaire’s views is evident in his call to distinguish between Portuguese and Spanish Jews and the Ashkenazim in Germany and Poland in his judgment of the Jews. His complaint that Voltaire was ignoring this division among the Jews expressed de Pinto’s pride in the superior nation to which he belonged, but at the same time it set standards of modernization that, in the opinion of his contemporaries, distinguished among different groups in the Jewish people: “A Jew in London bears as little resemblance to a Jew at Constantinople, as this last resembles a Chinese Mandarine! A Portuguese Jew of Bourdeaux, and a German Jew of Metz appear two beings of a different nature! It is therefore impossible to speak of the manners of the Jews in general without entering into a very long detail, and into particular distinctions: the Jew is a Chameleon that assumes all the colours of the different climates he inhabits, of the different people he frequents, and the different governments under which he lives.” Voltaire had to realize, he asserted, that members of the nation did not mix with the masses of other children of Jacob. They fit well into modern Europe, they did not have beards, and there was nothing foreign about their clothing, he said. The wealthy among them enjoyed themselves, beautified themselves, and were as splendid as the members of the other nations in Europe, he continued, and they were different from them only in their rites. The Portuguese Jews in England, France, and Germany regarded themselves as identical with the people of those countries and part of them, he said; certainly they could not be accused of harboring fierce hatred against non-Jews. With forgiveness, he said that one should not be surprised at the characteristics of the Jews of Germany and Poland, as they were the direct result of oppression. The contempt in which they were held rooted out every feeling of honor and virtue, he said. There were decent Ashkenazi Jews in Amsterdam and London, he continued, but distress caused the others to turn to crime, whereas the upstanding Portuguese Jews obeyed the laws.49 As Yosef Kaplan has explained, de Pinto’s Enlightenment critique combined with his sense of the separateness and superiority of the nation, which was fostered in Western Sephardi communities. This conception was sharpened in Amsterdam when the New Jews, recently arrived from the Iberian Peninsula, encountered Ashkenazi immigrants, who were inferior to them economically and socially and who were not involved, as they were, in European fashions.50

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Voltaire’s reply to de Pinto attributed fundamental significance to these twists and turns in philosophical discourse on the Jews. In fact, Voltaire confirmed de Pinto’s elitist approach, which discriminated in favor of groups and individuals who adopted European culture of the time and cooperated with the enlightened intellectuals. In his letter, Voltaire conceded that he had erred by accusing the Jews in general without considering Jews like de Pinto, who did not have those flaws. He wrote that he ought to have acknowledged that among the Jews there were highly honored scholars, as de Pinto’s letter conclusively proved. If de Pinto was a philosopher like himself, Voltaire said he could not ignore his criticism of the Jews and Judaism. It seemed that the European Enlightenment had expectations that Jewish intellectuals would join in the general struggle. “I shall tell you as frankly, that there are many who cannot endure your laws, your books, or your superstitions. They say that your nation has done, in every age, much hurt to itself and to the human race.” Voltaire’s response to de Pinto called on him implicitly to join in the great battle against superstition, which, in his opinion, was the root of every horror done to both Christians and Jews. If de Pinto influenced Voltaire at all, it is expressed at the end of his short letter: “As you are a Jew, remain so. You will never cut the throats of 42,000 men because they pronounced the word Shibboleth wrong, nor destroy 24,000 men for having lain with the Midianite women. But be a philosopher. This is my best wish to you in this short life.” With these sentences, Voltaire severed the essential connection between the Jews of antiquity and the immutable character of the Jewish people, and he also acknowledged that the community of scholars would accept this new type of Jewish philosopher in its ranks as a partner in the struggle of the Enlightenment to create a wellordered society.51 A year before de Pinto published his Apologie, Voltaire had already envisioned a Jewish philosopher of that kind. On November 20, 1761, Rabbi Akib arose and gave an emotional sermon in Hebrew in the synagogue of Izmir that was full of protest against superstition and its dreadful consequences. With deep revulsion at the burning of people for sins of faith, he cried out against religious fanatics and superstitious persecutors, praying that they might become human beings. Why were his Jewish brethren, Marranos who celebrated Passover in cellars in Portugal, condemned to be burned? “While the flames were consuming these innocent victims . . . these pitiless monsters were invoking the God of mercy.” They injured the good God while they were committing barbaric crimes against people whose only sin was that they were born Jewish. “O you pious tigers, you fanatical panthers,” you have forgotten that your God was himself a circumcised Jew. Let everyone worship God according to the

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religion he was born in, shouted Rabbi Akib, without seeking to pluck out your neighbor’s heart because of disputes that no one understands. He concluded with a prayer that there should be no more fanatics, no more persecutors on the face of this small earth. Rabbi Akib of Izmir was, of course, none other than a fictional character imagined by Voltaire. His sermon was written in response to rumors that reached Voltaire from Lisbon that thirty-two Jews, two Muslims, and three Jesuits had been burned at the stake. In fact, no one had been accused of Judaizing. The person who was executed on September 21, 1761, was the Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida, in the last auto-da-fé that took place in Lisbon. Writing to his friends in Paris, Voltaire asked, in anger mixed with cynicism and disappointment and crossing the border between reality and literary imagination, if it could be that there was another auto-da-fé, and “in this century! What would Candide say?” The Sermon of Rabbi Akib was one of Voltaire’s works using the character of the Jew as a philosopher who completely shared Voltaire’s tolerant and humanistic worldview. Because he had been a victim of prejudice in the past, he was most appropriate for condemning Christian fanaticism.52 The dispute around Voltaire’s “Jew” continued to reverberate for another decade. French priest Antoine Guenée defended the Bible in a comprehensive book that included letters by Portuguese and Ashkenazi Jews in the debate. They advanced many arguments against Voltaire, basing them on de Pinto, whose article was reprinted and included in the translations that appeared in English in North America, and forcing Voltaire to reexamine his attitude toward the Jews in subsequent editions of his writings. Voltaire never retracted his demonic, ridiculous, and contemptuous image of the Jews, while, in the same breath, calling for reconciliation. He protested that he was a friend of the Jews and had never hated them, and he even felt pity for them from the moment he became aware of their fate and suffering. He said that in historical balance, there was no doubt that Christians had committed unspeakable injustice against the Jews. Christians had persecuted, humiliated, and murdered. The Jews, he continued, had been cruel, fanatical monsters in the Land of Israel, and Christians were the same in Europe. He at last said to forget all that.53 Mendelssohn was not involved in this dispute but observed it from afar. He understood its significance and recognized that de Pinto’s countercriticism was successful and influential. In a later response, which he conveyed to de Pinto by means of a friend in common from The Hague, he expressed admiration for the man who had opposed Voltaire, though he rejected his pretension of Portuguese superiority: If the Jewish people were able to present ten authors of de Pinto’s stature, the Voltaires would speak about them in a different tone.

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De Pinto should not be insulted if the Ashkenazim were also proud of their achievements, he said, as they were all still sons of the same father, although he barely concedes that in his defense.54 In the early 1760s, the question of the Jews was part of the discourse about the principles of religious tolerance in the learned community, about the formation of the ideal man, and about the state and citizenship as expressed in The Social Contract, Emile, The Sermon of Rabbi Akib, and the Treatise on Tolerance. The new figure of the philosopher, who initiated this discourse and was sensitive to the infringement of justice and morality, became central in the public arena. The philosophical language of the Enlightenment was a decidedly humanistic and political language, and the aspiration for reform of the world and the purification of its flaws as the highest expression of human and social goodness informed its rhetoric. Hence, in the sermon that he wrote from the Jewish community of Berlin in 1763 to mark the end of the Seven Years’ War, Mendelssohn was able to include sentences in this philosophical language that could have been written by Voltaire’s pen. If there is a purpose to the war, it is the message of tolerance: “Love your neighbors, remember that we are sons of a single God, for we all have one father, and a single God created us for His honor, to engrave the religion of nature and love of humanity in our heart.” The two principal goals in the public sphere and in Mendelssohn’s political and religious thought—advocacy of the natural religion that made it possible to acknowledge the truths of faith by means of the light of reason and the doctrine of universal tolerance—are contained in his Sermon on Peace. This patriotic sermon, which celebrated Prussia’s success, was borne on the wings of a humanistic vision: “My beloved brothers! Let us worship the Lord our God and love our brothers like ourselves, these are the duties of our hearts, which God demands of us, and by reason we are required to fulfill both because reason requires them of us, even had they not come to us as a commandment of our Creator, because they sustain us, and they are our success.”55 Voltaire’s Rabbi Akib could not have put it better.

Note s 1. Jacob Emden, ‘Ets avot (Amsterdam: Unknown, 1752), 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 14, 15, respectively. 2. Moses Mendelssohn’s letter to Emden (September 30, 1766), Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19 (Stuttgart-Bad Cnnstaat: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 114. See also Shmuel Werses, Haskala veshabtaut: toldotav shel mavaq (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), ch. 2.

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3. Mendelssohn, Biyur milot hahigayon (Berlin: Unknown, 1766), introduction and foreword to section 6 (according to the introduction it was written in 1762). 4. Mendelssohn, On Sentiments, in: Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 5–129. 5. Ibid., 16–17 (third letter). 6. Ibid, 9 (first letter). 7. Ibid., 48–51 (eleventh letter). See Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), 65–67. 8. See Franceska Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 101–114. 9. See Steven and Henry Schwarzschild, “Two Lives in the Jewish Frühaufklärung: Raphael Levi Hannover and Moses Abraham Wolff,” Leo Baeck Yearbook 29 (1984): 229–276. 10. See Richard Lesser, “Dr. Marcus Elieser Bloch: Ein Jude begründet die moderne Ichtyologie,” Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 23, no. 2 (1999): 238–246. 11. See Guido Kisch, “Die Prager Universität und die Juden,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 6 (1934): 1–143. 12. See Adam Sutcliffe, “Can a Jew Be a Philosophe? Isaac de Pinto, Voltaire, and Jewish Participation in the European Enlightenment,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 3 (2000): 31–51. 13. See Helmut Reinhalter, “Sonnefels, Joseph Freiherr von,” Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 24 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2010), 576–578; Robert Kann, A Study in Austrian Intellectual History from Late Baroque to Romanticism (London: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960), ch. 4. 14. See Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, trans. Elisabeth Abbot (New York: Dover, 1967); Werner Hanak, ed., Lorenzo Da Ponte, Aufbruch in die Neue Welt (Ostfieldern: Hatje Cranz Verlag, 2006). 15. See Oluf Gerhard Tychsen, Dialecti Rabbinicae Elementa (Bützow: Unknown, 1763), 61–62; L. Donath, Geschichte der Juden in Mecklenburg (Leipzig: O. Leiner, 1874), 326–327; Malgorazta Ann Maksymiak and Hans-Uwe Lammel, “Die Bützower jüdischen Doctoren medicinae und der Orientalist O.G. Tychsen,” ed. Rafael Arnold, Michael Busch, and Hans-Uwe Lammel, Der Rostocker Gelehrte Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815) und seine internationalen Netzwerke (Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2019), 115–133. 16. See G. S. Rousseau and David Haycock, “The Jew of Crane Court: Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717–1791), Natural History and Natural Excess,” History of Science 38 (2000): 127–170. 17. John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 4 (London: Nicholas Son and Bentley, 1822), 608–609.

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18. Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 227– 228. For more on Emanuel da Costa, see David Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key, Anglo- Jewry`s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 204–214; Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 262–263. 19. See David Katz, “The Chinese Jews and the Problem of Biblical Authority in Eighteenth Century England,” English Historical Review 105, no. 417 (1990): 893–919. A similar letter was also sent to him in 1769, quoted in full in Arieh Morgenstern, “Hah.ipusim ah.ar ‘aseret hashevatim bamea hashmone-‘esre,” Doh.aqei haqets: meshih.iyut leah.ar hamashber hashabtai (Jerusalem: Maor, 2005), 178–201. 20. Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 636–637. 21. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, 85–88. 22. See Rousseau and Haycock, “The Jew of Crane Court,” 133. 23. See Lynn B. Glyn, “Israel Lyons, A Short but Starry Career: The Life of an Eighteenth-Century Jewish Botanist and Astronomer,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 56, no. 3 (2002): 275–305. 24. See Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key, 211–213; Hans Lausch, “A. S. Gumpertz und die Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres in Berlin,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 88 (1991): 11–26; Gad Freudenthal, “Aaron Salomon Gumpertz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and the First Call for an Improvement of the Civil Rights of Jews in Germany (1753),” AJS Review 29, no. 2 (2005): 299–353. On the visit to London, see 326–327. 25. See Aharon Emmerich of the Gumpertz Family, Sefer megale sod (Hamburg: Konrad Spirieng, 1765), introduction; Lausch, “A.S. Gumpertz und die Academie Royale des Sciences,” 12–13. 26. Gumpertz, Sefer Megale sod, introduction, and see also Max Freudenthal, “Ahron Emmerich-Gumpertz, der Lehrer Moses Mendelssohns,” in Die Familie Gompertz, ed. David Kaufmann and Max Freudenthal (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1907), 164–200; Gad Freudenthal, “New Light on the Physician Aaron Salomon Gumpertz: Medicine, Science and Early Haskalah in Berlin,” Zutot 3 (2003): 59–70; Thomas Kollatz, “Under the Cover of Tradition: Old and New Science in the Works of Aron Salomon Gumpertz,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth Century Enlightened Discourse, ed. Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep (Amsterdam: Royal Netherland Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007), 147–156; Hans-Uwe Lammel, “Leon Elias Hirschel, Aaron Salomon Gumpertz und die ῾Waisenkinder der Wissens,’” in Berliner Aufklärung: Kulturwissenschaftliche Studien, vol. 7, ed. Ursula Goldenbaum and Alexander Kosenina (Hanover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2020), 7–44. 27. Schreiben eines Juden an einen Philosophen nebst der Antwort, anonymous pamphlet (Berlin, 1753). See Freudenthal, “Aaron Salomon Gumpertz”;

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Jacob Toury, “Eine vergessene Frühschrift zur Emanzipation der Juden in Deutschland,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 12, no. 48 (1969): 253–281. 28. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11, 9–13; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “The Jews,” in Nathan the Wise, Minna von Bernhelm and Other Plays and Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Continuum, 1991), 166–172. 29. Qohelet musar was reprinted as the appendix to the comprehensive monograph: Meir Gilon, Qohelet musar lemendelson ‘al reqa’ tequfato (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1979). 30. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 14, 289. 31. Gilon, Qohelt musar, sections 1, 5. 32. Hameasef 4 (1788): 124. 33. Mendelssohn, Philosophische Schriften (Berlin: Christian Friedrich Voss, 1761); Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings, ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). The references to Rousseau and Voltaire are found on 215–216. 34. Mendelssohn to Fromet, June 5, 1761, November 10, 1761, in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 12–13, 64. See Barbara Hahn, The Jewess of Pallas Athena: This Too a Theory of Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 18–20. 35. Mendelssohn, Abhandlung über die Evidenz in Metaphysischen Wissenschaften (Berlin: Haube und Spener, 1764); Mendelssohn, “On Evidence in Mataphysical Sciences,” Philosophical Writings, 251–306. See Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 112–130. 36. The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, privately printed for the members of the Aldus Society (London, 1903). Beginning of Book XII. No translator listed. Gutenberg.org, November 13, 2017, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3913/3913 -h/3913-h.htm. 37. See Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, and Other Writings, trans. Brian Masters, ed. Simon Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Ian Davidson, Voltaire in Exile, The Last Years, 1753–78 (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), ch. 7. 38. Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (London: Dent, 1973). 39. Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Barbara Foxley, Gutenberg.org, June 1, 2018, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5427/5427-h/5427-h.htm. 40. Ibid., from “The Creed of a Savoyard Priest.” 41. Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, 3, 11, 87, 92–93, https://www .earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/voltaire1763.pdf. See Edna Nixon, Voltaire and the Calas Case (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961). 42. Nixon, Voltaire and the Calas Case, 134, 153, 182. 43. Katherine the Great, Selected Letters, trans. and with an introduction and notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 43–45.

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44. Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, 19, 24, 52, 57, 60–61, 89; and see David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism, The Western Tradition (New York: Norton & Company, 2014), 352–355. 45. Voltaire, “Jews,” in The Works of Voltaire, trans. William Fleming, vol. 10 (Akron, OH: Werner, 1904), 266–314. 46. Among others, see Heinrich Graetz, “Voltaire und die Juden,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 17 (1868): 161–174, 201–223; Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Jacob Katz, Sinat yisrael: misinat hadat leshlilat hageza’ (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1979), ch. 4. On the dispute between Voltaire and Hirschel, see Wilhelm Mangold, Voltaires Rechtsstreit mit dem königlichen Schutzjuden Hirschel (Berlin: Frensdorff, 1905). 47. See Bertram Schwarzbach, Voltaire’s Old Testament Criticism (Geneva: Droz, 1971); Harvey Chisick, “Ethics and History in Voltaire’s Attitude towards the Jews,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 4 (2002): 577–600; Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), ch. 12. 48. The work by Isaac de Pinto (Apologie pour la religion juive) is cited here according to Antoine Guenee, Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire . . . with Critical Reflections, trans. Philip Lefanu (Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 1845), 33–54. 49. De Pinto, Apologie, 23, 25–29. 50. See Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California, 2003), 112–115; Sutcliffe, “Can a Jew Be a Philosophe?”; Yosef Kaplan, “Yah.asam shel hayehudim hasefardim vehaportugalim layehudim haashkenazim beamsterdam bameah ha-17,” in Temurot bahistoria hayehudit hah.adasha, a collection of articles dedicated to Shmuel Ettinger, ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), 389–412. 51. Guenee, Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire, 54–56. 52. G. K. Noyer, Voltaire’s Revolution: Writings from his Campaign to Free Laws from Religion (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2015), 109–115; Nicolas Cronk, “Introduction,” in Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, trans. John Fletcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 53. Voltaire, “Jews,” 291–293, 297, 313–314; Guenee, Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire. 54. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, 527–528; Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 425–426. 55. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10, 289–296; Mendelssohn, “Drush ‘al hashalom hanidrash beveit hakneset deqehilat berlin . . . shnat taf-quf-kaf-gimel,” Hameasef 5 (1789): 22–23.

Part II

1764–1780

eight

k

“THE GREAT CHANGE” The Crisis in Poland, Awareness of Progress, and Humanistic Sentiment

Solomon Maimon r emember ed the years of his youth in the Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth as a chain of troubles and distress. Life in that backward and ignorant environment restricted his ability to develop his talents, and in his view, it was so miserable that the story of his success in liberating himself from it and in becoming, against all expectations, a German philosopher (“my spiritual revival”) was worthy of presentation as a model to everyone.1 This dramatic reversal, exemplified by the individual man in this heroic autobiography, conveyed a message to the modern age and testified to the power of elevated thought, which knows no boundaries other than those of reason itself. In this respect, in his opinion, the story of a Jew who had made such a huge change in his life was a contribution to the history of philosophy. A Polish Ashkenazi Jew belonging to the ethnic group that de Pinto placed on the lowest level of the Jewish hierarchy, Maimon proved to be someone who, toward the end of the century, attracted the attention of the most prominent philosophers, including Kant. In a letter to the famous philosopher at the University of Königsberg, Maimon says he was doomed at birth to spend the best years of his life in the forests of Lithuania, and he enclosed a copy of his German book, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. He says he was deprived of all assistance in acquiring knowledge until, fortunately, he arrived in Berlin, though belatedly. Kant replied to him via his student, the scientist and philosopher Marcus Herz (1747–1803), that from the first glance, he understood that the essay was excellent and that none of his critics understood him and this primary question as well as Maimon did.2

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“R ELIGIOUS FR E EDOM A N D R ELIGIOUS H ATR ED”: Pol a n d in th e V i e w of M a i mon a n d Bir k enth a l In 1764, at the age of only eleven, Maimon was forced into marriage and life under the strict rule of his mother-in-law. The sharp transformation that took place when he arrived in Germany was not visible on the horizon. In his autobiography, which was inspired by Rousseau’s self-revelation in Confessions, he concealed nothing about that experience and his sexual fears: “It was only natural that it took me a long time to fulfill this most basic marital duty, for I had married at eleven and had previously led the normal life of our people in this region. That is, I had little social interaction with the opposite sex. I had had, in fact, no knowledge at all of marital duties, and I regarded pretty girls like any other work of art. . . . I tended to make physical contact with my wife tremulously, as though she were a strange object.” The bride’s family was worried , and they didn’t hesitate to interfere with the couple’s intimate relations: “In an attempt to cure me of this evil, and in the belief that a spell had been cast on me at our wedding, I was brought to an old witch. She performed all kinds of procedures on me. They helped, I must admit, though only indirectly, i.e., because of their effect on my imagination.” At the age of fourteen, he became a father to his son, David.3 However, the young Maimon’s sense of injury was deep. He believed that an injustice had been done to him, as he had suddenly been snatched up and sent to a strange household in Nesvizh, where his wife’s family lived, and where a scholarly rabbinical career as a precocious and promising student was nipped in the bud. While they were still under the marriage canopy, his wife stepped on his foot as a charm to ensure control in the marriage: “I felt my bride’s slipper crush down on my foot with such force that I would have screamed out loud if my sense of pride hadn’t stopped me. I saw this as a bad sign, and thought: Providence has decreed that you will be your wife’s slave.” The two “Amazons”—the widow Madame Rissia, the owner of a tavern, and her daughter, Sarah—embittered his life and deprived him of liberty. His mother-in-law tyrannized him, and they even exchanged blows. As with the women peddlers in Lithuania, who were accused of harmful economic competition and remained without a voice, here, too, we cannot know what Maimon’s wife felt about the marriage that was forced on her. In his autobiography, he expressed no regret at fleeing from her and abandoning her for a decade in order to fulfill himself as a latecomer to the German republic of letters. Maimon also blamed his father for abandoning him and selling him on the marriage market: “I have to admit that my father’s behavior wasn’t entirely

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justifiable from a moral point of view. Only his great distress at the time can serve as a partial excuse.” He harbored two forbidden desires in his heart from his short childhood. One was nurtured when he gazed at a non-Jewish servant girl who left the bathhouse and jumped naked into the river, enveloped in warm vapor. “This sight transported me into a state of rapture,” he recalls. Any connection with the beautiful girl was forbidden, but “desires began to stir in me that I hadn’t felt before.” The second desire was the curiosity aroused by his father’s attractive bookcase. “He had forbidden the reading of all books except the Talmud, ” but when his father was not at home, he took out books of science and history and read them. One in particular, the book on astronomy by David Ganz (1541–1613), which was first published in Jessnitz by Israel Ben Abraham in the 1740s, was the cause of his breakthrough when he was only seven. The contrast between the dry matters of the Talmud and Halakhic discussions, which disgusted him, and the events of nature led to nothing less than a cultural rebellion, which had far-reaching meaning for him. A new world was opened for him, and he began the journey toward secular scholarship and philosophy beyond the confines of Talmudic learning.4 The story of his life, with its universal moral, also opened up a window for him on the miserable state of affairs in his home country. Maimon’s life ended at the close of the eighteenth century, and his biography can be seen as reflecting the entire second half of the century. For example, the First Partition of Poland took place when he was nineteen, and when he was thirty-six, the French Revolution broke out. In emigrating from Poland to Germany, he contributed to the social and cultural separation of these two principal centers of Ashkenazi Jewry, forging the image of the gap between the regions of progress and the backward countries. The modern age tore him away physically from the past and the tradition. This image and this consciousness of time were not the sole province of embittered, pessimistic, and critical Jews like Maimon. Stanislaw Staszic (1755– 1826), the Polish scientist and philosopher, was very similar. He was a Catholic priest, a man of the Enlightenment, and an enthusiastic advocate of reform. Like Maimon, he believed that his country was in crisis and being dragged backward and that all of Europe was already in the eighteenth century, while Poland was still back in the fifteenth century.5 Maimon, as a young Jew whose family life was woven into the fabric of the great estates of the magnates of the Radziwiłł family, explained that the main reason for Poland’s problems and its political weakness lay in the high aristocracy and the szlachta: “Most aristocrats go through life ignorant and without any kind of moral compass. . . . They strut around with titles and medals. They own numerous estates but don’t know how

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to manage them.” No wonder the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was in perpetual decline. The great crisis of the Partition of Poland began in 1772 and ended in the mid-1790s with the dramatic excision of Poland from the political map of Europe because, as Maimon noted, “Poland necessarily winds up being the booty of neighbors envious of its size.”6 The circumstances dictated by what appeared to be a degenerate feudal regime as well as the occupations available to many Jews (including Maimon’s grandfather and father)—service positions at the estates of the magnates as general lessees or sublessees, jobs obtaining licenses and monopolies such as for the production of beer and alcoholic beverages, work conducting trade on the rivers—offered economic prosperity and relative stability to the communities.7 Life in close connection with the Polish nobility, who understood the importance of the Jews for increasing their profits but who also did not conceal their revulsion from them, was indeed full of danger. Nevertheless, they lived in relative security in the social and economic fabric of Poland, and their demographic growth testifies to their exceptional power, despite their enemies. In the year when Maimon married, the number of Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth reached three-quarters of a million. Maimon explained, “Poland may be the only country where you will find religious freedom and religious hatred coexisting in equal measure.” The Jews, as a test case for the Polish paradox, enjoyed far-reaching religious and communal autonomy, although “the very name ‘Jew’ elicits disgust.” However, to be sure, “the religious and civil freedom in Poland does not stem from respect for the basic rights of all mankind,” but rather because the Poles recognize “that the Jews are almost the only industrious inhabitants of the country.”8 The year of Maimon’s marriage, which put an end to his childhood and plunged him dismally into poverty and dissatisfaction, was also a turning point in the history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The regime change in the Russian Empire in 1762 and two years later in Poland initiated a double and contradictory trend: the two young rulers made a true effort to effect reform in the spirit of Enlightenment, and unsentimental competition broke out for preeminence in international relations between a rising empire and a weakened kingdom, ultimately leading to the partitioning of Poland between her two neighbors. The new king of Poland, Stanislaw Augustus Poniatowski (1732–1798), who was elected in Warsaw in 1764, was the scion of two powerful families of magnates and proved to be the last king of Poland. A thinking and determined woman was responsible for that: the Prussian princess Sophia Augusta Frederica. She was born in 1729 in Stettin, in the district of Pomerania, and went to Russia at the age of fifteen to marry the crown prince. After

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the palace revolution of June 1762, the princess, then thirty-three years old, had herself crowned in the old capital city of Moscow and became the czarina Katherine II. The following spring, she was cordially accepted in an impressive ceremony in Saint Petersburg, establishing the basis of her legitimate rule.9 Like others of her generation, who internalized the ethos of individual selfscrutiny, Katherine also wrote memoirs as a document expressing an independent woman’s conception of her life. Like Maimon and Rousseau, she, too, saw her memoirs as a confession revealing her soul, her character, and mainly her desires.10 She was motivated by the aspiration for happiness and satisfaction of her mind and body, as well as by the desire to make her mark on the country she ruled. She was aware of the gender challenge to a woman in a position of power, and she believed that rational thought was a male province: “I venture to assert, in my own behalf, that I was a true gentleman, whose cast of mind was more male than female, though, for all that, I was anything but masculine, for, joined to the mind and character of a man, I possessed the charms of a very agreeable woman.” A wall of disdain separated her from her husband, and this was not unnoticed by the royal courts of Europe. Years went by before the marriage was consummated. On the evening of her wedding, Katherine consoled herself: “My heart predicted but little happiness; ambition alone sustained me. In my inmost soul there was something which never allowed me to doubt for a single moment that sooner or later I should become the sovereign Empress of Russia in my own right.” Focused on her goal, she built herself up as a philosopher, eagerly reading classical literature and the best works of the French Enlightenment, and she corresponded regularly with Voltaire, D’Alembert, and Diderot. The ambitious princess studied music, mastered the Russian language, and converted from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy. The lovers she chose were another expression of her autonomy. On sexual desire, she wrote that one cannot control the heart or block sensuality, and when it bursts out, even the most highly developed morality retreats. In late 1755 Katherine fell in love with the Polish count Poniatowski, who was three years younger, handsome, attractive, fashionably dressed, and conspicuous in his blond wig. He had arrived in Russia with the entourage of his patron, the British ambassador. His excellent European education, his knowledge of French, and his acquaintance with European aristocracy facilitated their liaison. They met secretly. Sometimes she disguised herself as a man, and he pretended to be a musician. A year later their daughter Anna was born; she died at the age of two.11 On July 2, 1762, Katherine wrote to Poniatowski, “I am sending you Count [Hermann Karl von] Keyserling (1697–1764) as my ambassador to Poland, so that after the death of the present king, he will make you the king.” In that letter,

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she also revealed how Peter III had been forced to abdicate and how her loyal supporters enabled her to gain control over the czar’s throne. The Sejm’s choice of Poniatowski is attributable to Russian intervention to no small degree. Katherine wished to deepen her grip on Poland, and, with the help of the energetic ambassador in Warsaw, Nikolai Repnin (1734–1801), and the foreign minister, Nikita Panin (1718–1783), she succeeded in having her former lover elected. She wrote to Panin with satisfaction, “I congratulate you on the king we created.”12 The thirty-two-year-old prince was crowned in November 1764 as king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the synagogue of the Vilna community, the coronation was celebrated with special prayers, led by the cantor with a chorus, expressing loyalty to the new ruler.13 Like Katherine, Poniatowski also was double faced. He was a ruler who struggled with domestic intrigues and diplomatic challenges and was fighting a rearguard battle for the existence of his kingdom. At the same time, he was a patron of the arts, encouraging enlightened circles, supporting the theater, ballet, and science, and seeking to institute reforms. However, she became famous on the entire continent as an admired ruler, and he came to be known as the king at the time of Poland’s political demise. Katherine II desired Poniatowski and had a daughter by him, she had him elected as king, and she was also the primary partner in conquering his country. The reforms that proposed increasing religious tolerance for minorities, making the government more effective, and reducing the power of the aristocracy met with resistance. The European powers made sure that Poland remained vulnerable and weak, which, among other things, was why Russia intervened as a defender of the “dissidents”: the Protestants and Orthodox Christians. Domestically, the patriots of the old order—groups of nobles who banded together in rebellious confederations in fear of infringement of their liberties and privileges and to preserve the Roman Catholic character of the country—were furious. From 1768 to 1772, the new king struggled against the Bar Confederation, which rebelled against him, until he was forced to accept the assistance of the Russian army to suppress the rebellion, thus bringing closer the destruction of his state.14 Katherine also knew her limits and was careful to avoid arousing opposition. Just a few days after her coronation, she was present at a meeting of the Senate when a proposal to allow Jews to enter Russia, presented by the czarina Elisabeth twenty years earlier, was again discussed. This time it was a daring proposal advanced by Jewish merchants from Holland to encourage Jewish settlement in the country. She conceded that she was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, such a significant change could be an expression both of tolerance and economic interest. On the other hand, the categorical decision

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of Elisabeth to deny the “haters of Jesus” a foothold in the empire, even for economic advantage, was brought to her attention, and she was deterred and asked to defer the matter until circumstances were ripe for such a radical step. The atmosphere was still charged after the palace revolution, and it was not a good idea to provoke the clergy and confirm a policy that might cause unrest. Although everyone acknowledged that a change in the attitude toward the Jews would be useful, sometimes it was not sufficient to be enlightened, have the best intentions, and possess the means for implementing them. British historian John Klier saw this as an expression of the new czarina’s pragmatism, which trumped every other value. Exclusion of the Jews from Russia continued even when, in December 1762, freedom of movement and immigration was granted to all other foreigners. Even the request of the city of Riga to allow the entry of Jewish merchants, so as not to lose in economic competition with other port cities like Königsberg, was officially rejected, though in fact contradictory instructions were issued to allow Jewish residence in Riga and other areas of “New Russia.” Katherine turned a blind eye to the few Jews who even lived unofficially in her capital. She circumvented the law without challenging the principle that Russia was closed to Jews, and she certainly did not imagine that by the end of her reign, about eight hundred thousand Jews would be living in the Pale of Settlement, in the new territories of the empire.15 In the years before the Partition of Poland, instability and danger increased. On June 18, 1771, Gutman Rakowski, a lay leader from Kazimierz, dictated his will to two of his fellow prisoners in Lanckorona, the place where the Frankists had been discovered fifteen years previously. He cried out bitterly at his fate, saying that his end was near, and he could no longer bear the hunger, the blows, and the tortures. Men of the Bar Confederation had robbed his home and stolen all his money and property. He had nothing left to bequeath to his miserable wife and their children. Even promissory notes for large amounts that were in his possession had been torn to shreds. The life of a propertied community leader was destroyed at the height of the period of anarchy that had stricken the Jews of Kazimierz and the shops they were permitted to operate in nearby Cracow. The rebellious confederation extorted money and suspected the Jews of spying against them. The Russian army, which was fighting against them, had conquered the settlements on both sides of the Vistula river twice. They destroyed shops, imposed payment of duties, demanded assistance in building the fortresses, and required the billeting of soldiers. The financial damage to the community was enormous. A journalist for a German newspaper in Poland reported that Jews had been hanged for spying on behalf of the Russians. “The Jewish city suffered more than anything,” he reported. “The men

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of the confederation believed that the Jews had betrayed them. Therefore they plundered the city, taking whatever they found, and, beyond that, committing many atrocities. The damage that was caused came to three hundred thousand zlotys.” Rakowski was taken captive by the confederation and sent to prison during the failed effort to recapture the city. On the day he dictated the will, he died, and his wife could barely raise the large sum demanded to ransom his corpse.16 The young Maimon was also an eyewitness to the crisis that struck Poland. The Russian soldiers, who already invaded in 1767, acted with savage violence, got drunk, and spread fear. Maimon himself was saved by the skin of his teeth when he was caught by Russian soldiers who forced him to serve as a guide.17 He did not mention the pogroms in the Ukraine, which climaxed in the massacre in Uman. The Russian army put down the insurrection of the Cossacks with an iron fist, but the fighting among the rebel groups, the Polish army, and the soldiers of the neighboring power, whose political interests were initially served by the uprising, created a power vacuum in which violence against thousands of Jews could break out.18 The Frankists also observed these changes tensely. They saw the strengthening of Russia and the penetration of its army as an opportunity to free their leader, who had been in prison in Częstochowa for six years. A letter sent from Saint Petersburg to Jacob Emden in Altona in the spring of 1768 by Avraham of Pińczów, the assistant of the intercessor Baruch Meeretz Yavan, contains a detailed report about the diplomatic effort that exploited “the scandal that was experienced in Poland by the Muscovite nation, who came there to resolve the controversy.” Three converted members of the Frankists were sent to Warsaw and Moscow to tell the priests and senior ministers there that Frank wished to convert to Greek Orthodoxy. Believing that Russia was the defender of the “dissidents,” they thought they could gain her protection if they promised that “more than ten thousand members of their cult wished to accept the Greek religion.” Baruch was summoned to thwart the plan. He told Polish diplomats in the Russian capital that the Frankists were plotting to join forces with Russia, and he recommended that Jacob Frank should be executed as a traitor. He warned the representatives of the Russian regime not to accept the offer, as the Frankists were a dangerous and anarchistic group that would become a fifth column in any war against Turkey. Anyway, added the intercessor, “this would be the fifth religion that the Frankists turncoats have taken, first Judaism, and then belief in Shabbetai Zevi, and they had to accept the Ishmaelite faith and again that of Shabbetai Zevi, may his name be blotted out, and a fourth time they forced them to accept the Christian faith, and now . . . this is the fifth time

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they change to the Greek religion.”19 About four years later, the Russian conquest of the city would, in fact, make it possible to free Frank, but meanwhile Avraham of Pińczów was pleased that the plot had been foiled. In his opinion, the willing ear he had found at Katherine II’s court would be significant in the future. It was already possible to prepare for the new era, when the Russian Empire would be present and important in the life of the Jews: “The lady of the monarchy of the kingdom of all, her highness the empress, is worthy that a miracle could be performed by her for the benefit of our nation and to preserve the religion of our faith.”20 The successful merchant from Bolichow, Dov Ber Birkenthal, was pleased by Poland’s downfall. It seemed to him that Poland was now being punished properly for her severe policies against the Jews. He wrote in his memoirs: “When the Bar Confederation arose, that is to say the rebellion against the kingdom and the senate in Warsaw, most of those in power rose up and said to one another, the Polish nation is a free szlachta forever, we have no part in Poniatowski.” With his own eyes, Birkenthal saw the collapse of the state, which was helpless against the intervention of foreign powers. A high officer who arrived from Paris with large sums of money for the rebels stayed in his house several times.21 He himself continued to travel between Galicia and the regions that produced fine Tokay wine in Hungary, running prosperous trade with customers from the heights of the aristocracy. But he was well aware of the dramatic meaning of the reforms advanced by the legislature and Stanislaw Poniatowski. Birkenthal viewed his rise to power as a sinister turning point in the centuries of Jewish life in Poland. As though he were the spokesman of a conservative Jewish confederation against the new king, Birkenthal wrote in his memoirs that something momentous had happened in Poland in 1764. As a Jew who was simultaneously at home in the country but exposed to various discriminatory edicts, he did not conceal his sense of insult: “Now I will tell about the great change that was made in the country of Poland to humiliate the people of our nation of Israel and the lack of even a little honor that they had always had from the time of their arrival to live here in the country of Poland, for nine hundred years until King Poniatowski.”22 The first steps toward this change were administrative and financial, and they even preceded the coronation of the new king by several months, although later they were identified with his policy. On June 6, 1764, the Sejm, which had assembled in the early summer, instituted a reform that would achieve two purposes: blocking the intervention of Jewish intercessors who bribed the nobles to prevent resolutions that would harm them and significantly increasing taxes. The resolution states, “According to a correct accounting, the state can, without

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difficulty, obtain far more revenue from the Jewish tax.” Therefore, the head tax, which was payable twice a year, was doubled to two zlotys per person, and, to reach this goal most effectively, the system of collection would be changed: “The Jews must pay according to their assessment, so that heads need not be appointed over them.” The indirect, collective tax collection, which until then had been in the hands of the community umbrella organizations, the Council of Four Lands and the Council of the State of Lithuania, would be abolished in favor of direct collection from the Jewish subjects, without mediation from autonomous institutions. In a far-reaching resolution, the Sejm announced that the councils must be dissolved within half a year, and in order to be precise and organize the machinery for tax collection, a census must be taken. As Birkenthal put it: “Uncircumcised commissars from all the districts of the land of Poland will be dispatched, and they themselves will count the number of Jewish heads.”23 The process was swift and organized, and it was already completed in early 1765. In every settlement, a census committee was established consisting of the rabbi, a parnas (lay leader), a gabbai (synagogue official), and a representative of the local Polish government. It was responsible for reporting the number of Jews older than a year to a higher official and swearing that the information was reliable. In various communities, everything possible was done to make sure the number was low. Birkenthal warned the members of the community not to report the truth. Rabbis and respectable parnasim did not hesitate to lie under oath when they were asked to confirm the data. In the three main areas of Jewish habitation—Western Poland and Little Poland, Lithuania, and White Russia and the Ukraine—587,658 Jews were counted, though it is generally thought there were 750,000. Despite the artificially low numbers, the purpose was achieved. Before the reform, 280,000 zlotys had been collected from the Jews, and in the year following the census, the revenue from the tax exceeded 1,100,000 zlotys. According to the demographic data collected by the state and in the light of later data, the Jews of Poland were nearly 7 percent of the eleven million inhabitants of the country. Constant population growth established the centrality of this community on the map of the Jewish eighteenth century. By the end of the century, after three Partitions of Poland within thirty-six years, the total number of Jews there shot up to 1,200,000, half the Jewish population of the world.24 Dissolution of the Council of Four Lands put an end to leadership positions and supra-communal meetings in which problems affecting everyone were discussed. Regulations were legislated, and intercessors were dispatched. The principal address, which had justified self-confidence and consciousness of

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central governance, was lost, and debts from the past remained. Elyakim Zelig of Yampol, for example, who just the year before had completed his mission in Italy to put an end to the blood libels, found it difficult to be reimbursed for his many expenses by the dissolved council, because he did not possess an official letter appointing him as an emissary. Ultimately a special tax was instituted for that sole purpose, whereas the request of the former lay leader, Meir Ben Yoel, for the return of money he had invested in printing the Polish pamphlet that presented documents opposed to blood libels was rejected categorically.25 Beyond these problems, the administrative steps of the Sejm had great further significance. As Israel Bartal explained, the removal of the corporative organization that had hitherto mediated between the state and its subjects represented a historical process in the framework of constructing the modern state. Therefore, “elimination of the supra-communal councils was an essential step in the trend toward making Poland, almost at the last moment of its independent existence, into a centralized state.” For the injured Birkenthal, as noted, this was primarily an expression of the humiliation of the Jews whose source was age-old hostility. In his interpretation of the historical changes since 1764, the Jewish policy was a key to understanding Poland’s downfall. “After the leaders and the heads of the country were deprived of their slight greatness, and this small honor was also taken from Israel,” the country was doomed to be erased from the political map: “As they did to Israel, so was done to them, for all the honor of their country was taken away, and they became the slaves of slaves forever.”26

Th e W in ds of Progr e ss Blow in Eu rope The “great change” from the dark Polish-Jewish viewpoint and the wine merchant’s schadenfreude contradicted awareness of the enlightened transformation that was taking shape in Europe at the time. The catalog of events for the years 1764–1771 is extremely dense, and on the basis of the changes listed there, at least among the political and intellectual elite, it gave rise to belief in progress. In Berlin of the 1760s, Mendelssohn shared enthusiastically in the spirit of progress. The Jewish citizen of the Republic of the Enlightenment wrote enthusiastically about the achievements of the eighteenth century: “After so many barbaric centuries, which followed on that beautiful dawn of philosophy, centuries, in which human reason must have been a slave to superstition and tyranny, philosophy has finally experienced better days. All areas of human knowledge have made considerable progress through a successful observation of nature. . . . Philosophy has not yet reached its bright midday, which our

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grandchildren perhaps will catch sight of some day.” And he gave thanks to “Devine Providence” that he was “born in these happy times.”27 European culture in the second half of the eighteenth century harbored a shared area of language, taste, and even ideas. Cooperation and mutual respect developed between kings who sought reform and philosophers who were “men of the world.” All the young people who ascended to thrones seemed to have been influenced by the humanistic values of the Enlightenment and sought the good of their country, but at the same time they clung to traditional aristocratic codes. A young couple prepared to assume the French monarchy. Their arranged marriage appeared to be a typical continuation of dynastic politics: Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), the daughter of Maria Theresa, and the crown prince of France, who would become Louis XVI (1754–1792) in 1774, were married in 1770 to strengthen the connection between Austria and France and to maintain the balance of power against Prussia. The fifteen-year-old princess from Vienna obeyed her mother’s instructions. Like Katherine, the Prussian princess who underwent Russian acculturation, or Caroline Mathilda (1751– 1775), the fifteen-year-old daughter of the king of England, who married the king of Denmark, Christian VII (1749–1808) in 1766 and was forced to adapt to the court of Copenhagen, and following in the footsteps of Queen Maria Leszczyńska (1703–1768), the wife of Louis XV and the daughter of the king of Poland, Marie Antoinette adapted to Versailles. In her first letter from Vienna to her daughter, Maria Theresa warned her that she must always obey French customs and never request anything new or mention Austrian customs and ask to imitate them.28 The princess reported on her daily routine from her golden cage in Versailles: public breakfast, change of clothes and hairdo, prayers, lessons in religion and music, trips, and visits to the king. The court was crawling with intrigues and gossip, but the news that most worried Maria Theresa was that in the young couple’s bedroom, the marriage had not yet been consummated. She sought to console her daughter, saying there was no reason to be angry after more than a year of disappointment. Perhaps some caresses and seductions would help. After all, they were both so young. The court physician was afraid the cause was impotence, as was written in the queen’s report to the Austrian ambassador in Paris, whose job was to keep an eye on the future queen of France. He wrote that if an attractive young woman like her was unable to arouse the crown prince, any medicine would be useless.29 As with the relations between Katherine and her husband, the royal couple in Denmark, intimate secrets became common knowledge and a political issue because of expectations for the birth of dynastic successors, and they also aroused erotic titillation. The voyeurism,

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the sensational rumors, and the gossip were reflected in the sensual art of the late rococo, which fostered this atmosphere and was nourished by it. The natural sciences also offered a basis for belief in progress and an attractive explanation of the world, as shown in another painting that also caught an exciting moment. In an oil painting exhibited in 1768 by the English painter Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797), An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, we see a scientist demonstrating the vacuum to a group of family members. A bird is fluttering in a glass dome as the air is removed, and the spectators look on tensely. Will the bird die? Science, which strives for the truth, collides head-on with human emotions. The atmosphere in the dark room is mysterious, even threatening. A girl covers her face as if she had seen a tormented saint giving up his soul. But rather than religious sanctification, it is a physical experiment that enthralls her.30 The air pump had been a symbol of experimental philosophy since the previous century, and three years later, Levison, Mordecai Gumpel Schnaber (1741–1797), in his essay on experimental science, revealed the miracles of the new science to Hebrew readers, such as refutation of the idea that air had no weight, by means of a detailed description of this “air-emptying vessel.”31 In those years, voyages to the New World also fired the imagination and enriched science. The most famous of these, which combined geographical, astronomical, and botanical research with adventurousness, was doubtless the voyage to the Pacific Ocean for the purpose of observing the area of Tahiti sponsored by the Royal Society. Captain James Cook (1728–1779), an experienced and skilled navigator as well as an expert cartographer and classifier of animals and plants, commanded the Endeavour, which departed from the port of Plymouth in the summer of 1768 on a voyage that expanded the boundaries of the world known to Europe. After mapping the coast of New Zealand (1769), he landed on the east coast of Australia (April 29, 1770), and in the ship’s log, he reported on the first encounter with the dark-skinned Aborigines, who were surprised and frightened because no one knew their language. They all fled, except for two who confronted them; thus, the descent to the shore was accompanied by gunfire. Confident that the discovery gave them ownership of the place, within less than twenty years, the British colony of New South Wales was established. Cook himself did not ignore the contradiction between the scientific and geographical achievement and the enormous economic advantage for Europe and the damage caused by invasion of the New World. He said that as cultured Europeans, they should be ashamed for destroying the natives’ way of life, introducing deadly diseases, and destroying the happy tranquility enjoyed by their ancestors. In light of this outlook, Cook’s violent death on his

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third voyage in a confrontation with the natives of Hawaii takes on particular significance as an expression of colonialism and its high cost.32 While Cook was sailing to Australia, Scottish explorer and scholar James Bruce (1730–1794) went to Africa in hopes of discovering the source of the Blue Nile. In 1770, in Ethiopia, he encountered the Felasha—Jews who, he reported, refused to convert to Christianity and preserved their tradition, customs, and ancient manuscripts. In his travel book, he wrote that he spoke with some of the Beit Israel, who told him that their leader was descended from the House of David, that they numbered about a hundred thousand, that their monarchs were named Gideon and Judith, and that they possessed a Torah scroll written in Ge’ez. They had lost the Hebrew they had brought with them from Jerusalem, they had never heard of the Talmud or of Kabbalah, and they did not wear ritual fringes. With his colonialist attitude, Bruce noted: “It required great patience and prudence in making the interrogations, and separating truth from falsehood; for many of them, (as is invariably the case with barbarians) if they once divine the reason of your inquiry, will say whatever they think will please you.” He applied the Christian stereotype to these Jews, calling them stiff-necked and obstinate. However, by asking them whether they truly came from Jerusalem, he initiated research on the Jews of Ethiopia.33 French scholar Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811), the author of the best-selling Voyage around the World (1771), led an expedition to the islands of the Pacific (1766–1769). Bougainville brought a native of Tahiti, Ahutoru, back to Paris and presented him as a noble savage. Ahutoru was given an audience with the king, attended the opera, and was examined with curiosity as an exotic specimen. In the wake of this voyage, Diderot wrote a dialogue condemning the cruelty of colonialism, but more than that, he presented the natives as a standard for critical and penetrating analysis of European society. Diderot wrote: “Savage life is so simple, and our societies are such complicated mechanisms! The Tahitian touches the origin of the world, and the European touches its old age.” He was particularly fascinated by the sexual freedom of the Tahitians. Among us, shame is an obstacle: “Our pleasures, once so sweet, are accompanied by remorse and fear.”34 For Mendelssohn, who was the same age as Bougainville and only a few months older than Cook and Bruce, the European encounter with the natives of the New World was an important test of the values of Enlightenment. In 1769, he wrote against the missionary character of Christianity, saying that expeditions should not be sent to India or Greenland to preach to the natives to accept Christianity. In contrast, Judaism was tolerant and lacked the urge or obligation to make converts. In reference to the northern Danish-Norwegian

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colony, he even said that one might envy the people who observe the laws of nature properly. Fourteen years later, Mendelssohn expanded on his arguments about the change in thinking demanded by the encounter with the New World. He challenged the conceptions of his contemporaries and advocated a pluralistic picture of the world: when one comes to discuss religious ideas with a still-unknown nation, one must be careful not to see everything through the eyes of one’s own homeland. Impressed by the “savage,” Omai, whom Cook brought to England after his second voyage, and as an anthropologist before his time, Mendelssohn imagined that another Omai had reached Europe and seen the letters of European writing. Upon returning to his land, he would take that as the religion of Europe and report that the people were enmeshed in superstitions and worshipped the meaningless lines they wrote down. European explorers would frequently make similar errors when they reported on the religion and beliefs of distant peoples. To avoid these errors, one must make a deep and serious study of the languages and symbols used in other cultures. More than anything, on the basis of this encounter, he built his arguments in favor of religious tolerance and argued against missionary colonialism: “If, therefore mankind must be corrupt and miserable without revelation, why has the far greater part of mankind lived from time immemorial without any true revelation? Why must the two Indies wait until it pleases the Europeans to send them a few comforters to bring them a message without which they can, according to this opinion, live neither virtuously nor happily?” It was inconceivable that God would have neglected the “savages” and left them in ignorance until Christians arrived from Europe. This critique supported the principled argument for natural religion that every human being was given the rational ability to know by himself. It pleaded for acceptance of people who were different and other, and, in Mendelssohn’s opinion, it refuted all arguments for discrimination against Jewish citizens.35

“Th e Old L egen ds”: Cru elt y, R ebelliousne ss, a n d Com pa ssion Mendelssohn, who exploited the encounter with the New World to demand tolerance for everyone from enlightened public opinion, revealed the weak point in what appeared to be the march of progress. The new elite “men of the world,” including Mendelssohn, criticized the defects in European society. After a visit to the palace at Versailles in the autumn of 1767, Benjamin Franklin (1706– 1790) wrote a letter to London, incidentally pointing out what would break out about two decades later. Franklin, who was born in Boston, was a generation

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older than Mendelssohn. He was a statesman and diplomat in the service of the colonies that were to become the United States of America, and he became famous in the community that prized knowledge and philosophy. When Voltaire entertained visitors from America in his chateau at Ferney, he praised Franklin as a discoverer of electricity, a talented genius, and a great philosopher of nature.36 In his self-image, as expressed in his influential autobiography, he was similar to his contemporary, Maimon, a model of individualism who shaped his own fate. He wrote of having “emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity.” When he went to France, it was almost self-evident that he would have an audience with Louis XV. He was impressed by the architecture and the huge financial investment that made it possible to build the palace, he wrote, but he also noticed the neglect. The fountains were in disrepair, the stone walls of the façade were dilapidated, and windows were broken. On his way from Calais to Paris, Franklin reported about the service that was still required as a feudal obligation and about increasing bitterness: “The poor Peasants complain’d to us grievously, that they were oblig’d to work upon the Roads full two Months in the Year without being paid for their Labour.”37 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a fourteen-year-old lad from Frankfurt, remembered well how fortunate he was to have come of age after the Seven Years’ War: “The 15th of February in that year [1763] was celebrated as a festival day, on account of the conclusion of the Hubertusburg treaty, under the happy results of which the greater part of my life was to flow away.”38 International relations in Europe after 1763 were relatively quiet, aside from skirmishes between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The next great outbreak of war took place only about thirty years later, in the battles of the French Revolution. The basis for confidence in a period of happiness such as Goethe expressed appears to have been solid, but the fissures that Franklin saw were evident not only in the walls of the Palace of Versailles.39 While Franklin was writing his autobiography in a tranquil English village in 1771, the colonies in North America were approaching the decisive point of conflict that led to their independence. The imposition of new taxes, such as the sugar tax of 1764 and the stamp tax, to reduce the huge debt that had been caused by the war was viewed as arbitrary and illegal. The slogan No taxation without representation now became a revolutionary explosive. Units of the British army were sent to impose order, to protect government officials, and to put down the violent riots that broke out against the taxes. The obligation to billet soldiers in the homes of the residents exacerbated the hostility. At the peak of the turmoil,

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on March 5, 1770, residents of Boston confronted soldiers, and shots were fired; five people were killed, and six were wounded. This became a symbol of the colonial rebellion. The violence in the streets reverberated in the newspapers and pamphlets that competed for public opinion in England and America. The Sons of Liberty called this incident the Boston Massacre, and primary responsibility for it was placed on Parliament in London, which had struck at the freedom and sovereignty of the colonies as well as at the spirit of the Magna Carta, which had throbbed in Britain for centuries. The opposite interpretation, as expressed from the viewpoint of the British rulers, protested against the attack by lawless rioters against British soldiers, portraying the “regrettable incidents in Boston” as the result of the necessary effort to suppress revolt against the king.40 The struggle intensified, and, for example, in the summer of 1770, five Jewish merchants in New York joined an organization to block imports from England and signed a treaty to observe the prohibition.41 Severe criticism in the name of freedom was leveled against the rule of George III in England itself. During the years after the Seven Years’ War, the oppositional struggle of ambitious and bold politician John Wilkes (1726–1797), which was widely supported, threatened political stability. Wilkes, a libertine in his way of life, had a licentious reputation. He was pursued and arrested by special order and accused of insulting the king and his ministers in his critical and satirical essays. He was elected to Parliament several times, but his appointment was denied, and his defeated opponent received his seat. Wilkes’s radical personal political struggle expanded into a protest movement against injustice and suppression of liberty and overflowed into the streets. His supporters, who were from the middle and lower classes—craftsmen, apprentices, and shopkeepers—shouted: “Wilkes, Liberty and Number 45” (a reference to his newspaper). In America, the Sons of Liberty followed the demonstrations “by the true sons of liberty” in London. The leaders of the rebellion against Britain, including John Adams (1735–1826) and John Hancock (1737–1798), signed a letter of support sent to Wilkes from Boston. They wrote that his struggle for exalted goals could prevent the great apparatus of the British Empire from bursting into smithereens. In the spring of 1768, Wilkes was tried and imprisoned, and a mob calling for his release gathered in front of the prison for several days, defying the soldiers who were preserving order. Rebellious outcries were heard against the king, Parliament, and the judges. The riots peaked on May 10, when, as in the Boston Massacre, the soldiers opened fire and killed seven people. The incident in London was known as the St. George’s Fields Massacre. Wilkes was ultimately released and served in Parliament. He went from being a persecuted outlaw politician to being a legitimate leader

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and the Lord Mayor of London. However, for more than a decade, Wilkes was found at the heart of the popular turmoil that opened the first cracks in the calm exterior of British public life in the eighteenth century. The riots were a real threat, and George III even considered abdicating from the throne. Prosecution of Wilkes for slander was a symbol of the struggle for freedom of speech.42 The affluent Jewish merchants of London supported the king and even organized a counterdemonstration, but one Jew, with radical positions, entered the English political discussion as an enthusiastic supporter of Wilkes, joining his public voice to the camp of the lovers of liberty. Abraham Tang (Taussig Neungerschel, 1740–1792), whose parents came to London from Prague and Opatów, was an intellectual who, like Mendelssohn, combined Judaism and the Enlightenment in his cultural world. He quoted from the Bible and rabbinical literature with the same freedom with which he referred to Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Newton. Tang was a marginal figure. Most of his writings in Hebrew and English remain in manuscript form, and he never gained status or influence. However, his self-definition in the public arena as a “primitive Ebrew” expressed exceptional radical Jewish self-awareness and the defiance of a partisan of natural religion—critical, wounded, and persecuted because of his opinions—making him almost a British version of Maimon.43 Wilkes’s democratic protest and his revulsion at the tyranny of the government spoke to Tang’s heart, and he expressed his identification with him in a pamphlet published in London in 1770. Wilkes’s camp, which was guided by the idea of liberty, was his target audience. Tang described the political reaction to it with concern. He argued that the government was showing signs of becoming an absolute monarchy and that ordinary people were subject to the whims of a few tyrants who sought to gratify their appetites. His pamphlet, he said, was not a betrayal of the king or rebellion against the government, but rather an effort to strengthen the crown of George III, who had been captured and misled by his ministers. Tang denied any intention of inciting riots and swore allegiance to the country where he had been born and obedience to its laws. However, he insisted, criticism was vital because the principles of British liberty were in danger. The pamphlet was full of the slogans voiced by Wilkes’s supporters. It condemned despotic rule, opposed taxation of the colonies, and cited verses from the Torah and the Prophets to prove the importance of a just and ethical government. King Solomon, for example, was a model for the throwing off despotism and the aspiration for liberty. This was one of the first political statements written by a Jew in the eighteenth century, and it spoke in opposition. At this point in time in the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century, Tang, the son of Jewish immigrants from Bohemia and Poland, had

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a deep British identity. Seventeen years after the revocation of the Jew Bill in Parliament, under political and popular pressure that revealed quite a bit of prejudice, he did not feel foreign or inferior. Britain was his homeland. He identified with the suffering of his people and was proud to be a subject of a wonderful state, where the laws were based on reason. Tang declared that he was fortunate to live in a country where the laws were the same for those who were born there and for immigrants.44 A feeling of belonging to the place also developed among the Jews of Poland, but political identification of that kind with the values of the country, leading to active involvement in order to warn against their erosion, was not yet conceivable. In a kingdom that was approaching its political demise and was subject to pressure from the rebellious aristocracy, which had organized in the Bar Confederation, from increasing Russian intervention, and from the rebellions of the Cossacks, the Jews were more vulnerable than ever. About a month after the St. George’s Fields Massacre, several thousand Jews and Polish aristocrats fell victim to a bloodbath and massacre perpetrated by the Haidamaks in the Ukraine, who were afraid of a blow against Orthodox Christianity. In stinging contradiction to Mendelssohn’s belief—expressed in that very year—that the times of barbarism had passed and to Goethe’s memory of years of peace and tranquility, a wave of violence erupted in Uman in the summer of 1768. Testimony describing the desperate effort at self-defense states: “The wicked [Ivan] Gonta [one of the commanders of the rebellious Cossacks] orders that they should not be merciful to any Jew, and anyone who takes a Jew into their house his brain will be broken. And eighty Jews hid in a cellar, with arms. When one of the rioters came in, they killed him. The rioters saw that they could not enter. They lit straw and threw it into the cellar, and they all died of smoke.”45 This was the most murderous attack on a Jewish community during the eighteenth century. Contemporary descriptions of the massacre cry out in dirges: death is everywhere, and “the deep well in the market square was full of the bodies of murdered children.”46 The prolonged crisis in Poland, which was soon to bring about a change in the political map of Europe, made possible this outbreak of violence, which was unparalleled in other places. At that time in Western Europe, the Jews’ sense of security grew stronger. In Denmark, for example, although the conservatives defeated the short but intense effort to institute reforms in the spirit of the Enlightenment, the lives of the Jews were not affected. The northern kingdom, which also ruled Norway and Schleswig-Holstein at that time, played no significant role in international relations, and the small and young community of Jewish merchants (nearly 2,000, almost all in Copenhagen), which was

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formed in the mid-seventeenth century by the immigration of Portuguese and Ashkenazi Jews from Holland and Germany, was also relatively marginal in Western European Jewry. The dedication of the new synagogue in November 1766 symbolized the solidity of the community on the very same day that the marriage of Christian VII was being celebrated in the Christiansborg Palace. For this Jewish community, this was an opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to Denmark and to express gratitude to God, “who, in our exile, made us an object of mercy in the eyes of the monarchs of this country, who have treated us very well.” A patriotic prayer composed for the event blessed the king “to give him seed from our lady the queen who came into his house.” Poet Naphtali Herz Wessely composed these prayers, and the young Isaac Euchel, who was born in Copenhagen, was apparently among those present. Both these men later led the Haskala movement in the 1780s and wove a vision of the future reform of Jewish society and culture.47 For the seventeen-year-old king, whose sanity was precarious, this was the beginning of an unhappy marriage. The queen, Caroline Mathilda, was unfaithful to him, taking the royal physician as her lover, bearing a child by him, and shaming her husband. Between 1768 and 1771, the physician, who was involved in the royal scandal, took control of the government and sought to reshape Denmark in the spirit of the vision of liberty. Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–1772), a graduate of the university of Halle, had been a physician and philosopher in Altona during the 1760s and was a young and enthusiastic proponent of the German Enlightenment. He strove to improve society by means of science and the elimination of superstition and magic. Immediately after being invited to the court in Copenhagen, he gained the absolute confidence of Christian VII and began an experiment in enlightened politics. The king’s weakness and dependence enabled Struensee to rise to the level of senior minister and to do what he wished with the government. During the last fourteen months of his life, his office issued more than a thousand revolutionary decrees, which, among other things, attacked the privileges of the aristocracy, decreased the control of the absolutist regime over the life of its subjects, effected deep reform in the judicial system (abolishing torture), and encouraged education for broad segments of the population. One of them (September 4, 1770) even proclaimed freedom of expression in the press. Struensee’s vision of equality and freedom also included the Jews. In Altona, he had found a Jewish companion in enlightenment—physician Hartog Hirsch Gerson. He declared that when a physician treated a patient who needed his assistance, it made no difference whether he was a Jew or a Christian or neither of the two. Among the decrees issued by Struensee in Copenhagen in the king’s

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name were several that sought to change fundamentally the status of the Jews. For example, in the framework of making criminal penalties more lenient, “His Highness the King decided to free the Jew, Herz Mendel Raphael, who was condemned to a year of hard labor in the fortress.” As a symbol of ending discrimination against Jews, the king decided that Simon Polack, a Jewish graduate of the university in medicine, was entitled to the same privileges and academic titles as Christians, “without consideration of religion.”48 Throughout this time, the autonomous rights of the communities were preserved. A report that reached London from Copenhagen in the spring of 1771 states that the number of Jews had increased, they had erected a synagogue and gained various privileges, and they were permitted to punish delinquents according to their own laws.49 Ultimately the enlightened minister was caught in a trap. In his rapid rise, in his ambition for reform, in the bitter opposition he encountered, and in his resounding downfall, his fate was similar to that of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer of Württemberg, some thirty years previously. The forces that sought to preserve the old order showed their determination and power. His romantic relations with the queen and his administrative upheaval were greeted with dread and fury by conservative men of the government and the church, who regarded Struensee as a traitor who was dismantling the foundations of Denmark. Finally, led by a theologian and teacher in the royal court, Ove Høegh-Guldberg (1731–1808), they launched a successful conspiracy against him. The willful queen was arrested and sent back to England, and Struensee and his closest colleague were arrested, tried, and condemned to death. The judges found that his enormous personal ambition was his undoing, setting him on the path that ultimately led to the violent fate that is always the result of unrestrained pride. A minister, Balthasar Münster, visited Struensee in his cell almost every day to prepare him for death and save his soul. Münster claimed that in his last days, haunted by the dread of approaching death, he changed the materialist philosopher’s heart. The man who had believed that man was merely a machine and denied the existence of the soul repented and accepted the Christian faith. Ambition and the appetites were his downfall, Struensee confessed. The minister read him the verdict: his right arm would be cut off, he would be beheaded, his body would be quartered, and his head would be placed on a pike and exhibited publicly. Münster reported that he was an eyewitness to the execution on the morning of April 28, 1772. Struensee’s neck was severed before his eyes, and his head rolled to Münster’s feet.50 Enlightened Europe took the news from Copenhagen very hard. The disappointment was as great as the hopes for reform in Denmark had been high. Voltaire was seized with chills, Lessing was shocked by the abominable deed, and

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the believers in progress asked in despair whether the transition from darkness to light and the effort to remove tyranny had reached a dead end. Nevertheless, in the 1760s and 1770s, rulers and writers persisted in their efforts to restrain the horrors committed by human beings. For example, Katherine II did not forget the cries of mourning and grief in the summer of 1758, when news of the thousands of casualties in the battle of Zorndorf reached the palace. About twenty thousand soldiers died on the Russian and Prussian side. In pain, she wrote in her memoirs that it was a blood-soaked day during which so many people lost family members and friends, and gaps yawned in the ranks of the high command.51 Exactly in those years, an effort was made to put an end to trials for ritual murder in Poland. Long before he was elected as king, as noted, Stanislaw Poniatowski responded with disgust when he heard about the priests who prosecuted one of the cruel blood libels and had innocent Jews murdered with torture.52 The massacre in Uman also reverberated in London. A chronicle that surveyed the events of 1768 reported with shock that the Haydamaks had run riot again in the Ukraine. This time they set fire to three cities and more than fifty villages and massacred five thousand people. The Annual Register reported that most of the miserable victims were Jews who were cruelly burned to death. This happened, it added, while Poland was in anarchy. It was impossible to travel on the roads in security. The king was a slave of Russia, and things were happening there that were a shame to the human race. The cruel deeds in Poland are so frequent that they numb any human feeling and turn the heart to iron, making it immune to pity and compassion. The pogroms against the Jews were regarded as a harsh blow to the supreme value of humanism that can be expected of every person.53 The arousal of humanistic sentiment led a number of countries to rethink the use of torture in judicial procedures—what Foucault called refining the art of punishment—and the decree issued by Struensee in Denmark was one of the earliest of the reforms in this spirit.54 Italian intellectual Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) declared that torture was no longer justifiable in a book first published in Livorno in 1764. His was one of the strongest and most influential voices against cruel punishment; he argued that judicial proceedings must consider human dignity and that the principle of working toward the greatest possible good must also serve as a standard for the treatment of delinquents. Should one crush a man’s bones to purify him, as it were, from the shame that clung to him? Such torture should not be tolerated in the eighteenth century, he declared in the sixteenth chapter of his On Crimes and Punishments. In the minds of enlightened philosophers like Beccaria, and in the image of the eighteenth century as an era undergoing blessed humanization, the expectation of

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shedding the barbarism of the past had taken root. Beccaria, who was then only twenty-six years old and imbued with the ambition to reform the world, wrote that his book conveyed the ambition for happy days, for a future where truth would prevail over the vast sea of error.55 Voltaire was still stunned by the impression left by Beccaria’s book when a new affair broke out, shocking him. Not much time had passed since the Callas Affair, and once again he heard about a judicial murder in France, this time of a boy who was convicted of the desecration of Christianity in a village in Picardie. He pointed out to Beccaria that while he was formulating his lofty principles, others were promoting barbarism in the trial and execution— which included torture and burning at the stake—of François-Jean Lefebvre de la Barre (1745–1766). His enemies had spread rumors that he belonged to a sect that maliciously attacked statues of Jesus and stabbed communion wafers with daggers—the very accusations that were leveled against the Jews all over Europe. The verdict was carried out in the summer of 1766 with cruelty that was unimaginable, Voltaire complained. Except for a few fanatical enemies of humanity, the dreadful fate of de la Barre aroused revulsion all over the continent.56 This time Voltaire was not merely a spectator. One piece of evidence that was used to convict de la Barre was Voltaire’s most recent book, the Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, which was found in the possession of the accused and burned along with his body. This dictionary, printed for the first time in 1764, was indeed one of the most subversive works of the French philosopher. In the view of the conservatives, it confirmed Voltaire’s image as a dangerous and unrestrained deist who coarsely attacked the sanctity of the religion, and, like Beccaria’s book, the dictionary was placed on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books. The entries were written with sarcasm and attacked religious fanaticism, mocked theological doctrines about the essence of God, and reflected cultural relativism that placed Christian Europe in an inferior position. Continuing in the critical tradition of Pierre Bayle and early English deism, it fired sharp arrows at the early history of the Jews as well. The humanistic sentiment of the dictionary was clear and blunt. In the entry on “Tolerance,” he wrote: “It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.”57 This subversive book was quickly circulated in the enlightened community. Tang, for example, quoted from the entry “Fatherland” in his political essay to support his critique of leaders who boast of their patriotism but in fact love only themselves and ensure that their own interests are taken to be the interest of the entire community. In another work, which has remained in manuscript,

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Tang translated Voltaire’s more radical entries into Hebrew, such as “God,” with which the primitive Ebrew from London agreed.58 In contrast, Mendelssohn read the dictionary with caution, reservations, and even apprehension. In a letter to Thomas Abbt, he wrote that the “old man” has a tendency to debase and defame, and the result is damaging. Such an extreme book misses the mark and achieves the opposite results, causing many people to revert to superstition.59 Mendelssohn did not relate directly to what Voltaire had written about the ancient Jews, but he insinuated that he regarded attacks on biblical figures such as David and Saul as frivolous. As in his earlier references to the Jews, in Voltaire’s dictionary, they were a double and contradictory touchstone. On the one hand, he presented the Jews of the Bible as the opposite of tolerance, calling them a group of barbarians who mercilessly slaughtered the inhabitants of a small and miserable nation. On the other hand, he saw them as a group worthy of being included—along with the Muslims, the Mandarins, the Brahmins, the Hindus, the Catholics, the Protestants, and others—in the society of the future, in which ethnic and religious differences will no longer influence life.60 The earliest effort on behalf of the Jews in Central Europe to translate humanistic sentiments into political action and a policy of Jewish reform emerged in the 1780s, in the Vienna of Joseph II. In the years when Struensee’s liberal revolution in Denmark failed and the de la Barre case nearly debilitated the Enlightenment, Prince Joseph was preparing to take over the reins of the Austrian Empire. When Friedrich II wrote to Voltaire that people were beginning to think even in Austria, he was referring to the political change in the offing there, as a young man who aspired to reform the world and identified with the values of the Enlightenment was approaching the focus of influence. At the age of only twenty-four, he was chosen as the king of Rome in a well-orchestrated step by the queen, who wished to guarantee the succession. After the death of Franz I in the summer of 1765, Joseph did indeed become the emperor. For fifteen years, Joseph held the highest royal titles, but Maria Theresa remained in fact the absolute ruler of the Habsburg Empire until the last day of her life. Their relations were occasionally tense, among other things, because the empress anticipated the radical transformation that her son was planning to effect. In a letter to his mother reflecting the intersection of pragmatic considerations of progress and the good of the state and indifference to differences in religion, Joseph hinted that, without considering religious adherence, he planned to employ the most talented and those who will be beneficial to economic activity and would permit them to purchase land, to engage in commerce, and to become citizens. For her part, she was horrified by the very thought, and she

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warned him of the dangers of general tolerance. “May God preserve you from this evil . . . you will destroy your state” by betraying the true religion and not preserving Catholic dominance.61 The coronation of Joseph II as king of Rome took place in the cathedral of Frankfurt on March 3, 1764, and was a brilliant and ostentatious peak of the age of absolutism. For the adolescent boy, Goethe, it was an impressive and unforgettable experience that thrilled his heart. His home city was polished for the arrival of the prince electors, and for the day of the coronation itself, many aristocratic delegations crowded the town in their regalia, and for several days, the residents celebrated in anticipation, with long parades, outdoor banquets, music, and fireworks. The grandiose event appeared to Goethe as a well-staged theatrical performance and as a marvelous work of art. The meticulously set stage was indeed intended to fix the social hierarchy in people’s minds and to leave the impression of unshakable governmental power. He conceded that “a politico-religious ceremony possesses an infinite charm,” arousing both admiration and submission.62 The excitement in the spring of 1764 in the vibrant and bustling city did not skip over the Jews in the Frankfurt ghetto. The lay leaders of the community protested against the order that on the day of the coronation, the Jews must close themselves off behind the gates and avoid being present in the streets. A delegation headed by Zissel Kulp met with the chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, who granted their request and issued an order that no Jew should be harmed in the city streets, enabling the men and women of the community to take part in the festivities. They also pressed into the crowd to see the parades and the royal coaches and to shout out enthusiastically, “Long Live!” Three pages in the register of the Frankfurt community described the event—“The Coronation Day”—in detail. They boasted that a delegation had been received for an audience with the emperor and his two sons. They gave them expensive gifts, and, in German, they pledged their fidelity and received a promise for continued grace and the protection of the Jews in their realm. These gestures expressed more than submissive flattery and dependence on the government. Kulp, like his colleagues in the delegation, was dressed in a manner suited to the occasion—black velvet clothing with a black silk coat. He had a deep feeling of accomplishment for the community. He was impressed by aristocratic culture and believed in the sincere friendship evinced by the emperor and the new king of Rome.63 On Shabbat Hagadol (the Sabbath before Passover) of 5524 (1764), about a week after the coronation, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau gave a sermon in Prague in honor of Joseph, and it, too, combined traditional loyalty to the monarchy and the expectations aroused by the young prince’s approach to the center of

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power. “I gave praise and thanks to the Lord, for raising up an important and good king, perfect in all the virtues,” said Landau, comparing him, in the messianic spirit that enveloped the image of Joseph II, to Cyrus, the ancient king of Persia, in whose day the return to Zion took place. The coronation occurred in the Hebrew month of Nisan, of which the Talmud says “proper and good kings are appointed in Nisan.” This was appropriate for the ruler who would be like Cyrus, whom the prophet Isaiah called “anointed by the Lord.”64 Fifteen-year-old Goethe was troubled when he heard that on the eve of the celebrations, the Jews were “confined to their quarter.” Compassion, shame, and curiosity flooded his heart because of the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Frankfurt. At first he dared only to peek hesitantly and fearfully at the street of the Jews and to gain impression of the crowding, the filth, and the tumult. “The old legends of the cruelty of the Jews towards Christian children . . . hovered gloomily before my young mind.” Then, however, he entered the ghetto and found that “they also were men, active and obliging, and even to the tenacity with which they clung to their peculiar customs, one could not refuse one’s respect.” He visited the synagogue, attended a circumcision and a wedding ceremony, and befriended pretty Jewish girls. Then he wondered how it could be that “the large caricature [of the Judensau (the Jew sow) was] still to be seen, to their disgrace, on an arched wall under the bridge tower.” The shame and defamation directed publicly at the Jews offended him personally.65

Note s 1. Salomon Maimon, Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte von Ihm selbst geschrieben und herausgegeben von K. P. Moritz, vols. 1–2 (Berlin: Karl Philipp Moritz, 1792–1793); The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation, trans. Paul Reitter, ed. Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). See Liliane Weissberg, “A Voice of a Native Informer: Salomon Maimon Describes Life in Polish Lithuania,” in Writing Jewish Culture: Paradoxes in Ethnography, ed. Andreas Kilcher and Gabriella Safran (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 25–47; Abraham P. Socher, The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon: Judaism, Heresy and Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). 2. Letter from Solomon Maimon to Immanuel Kant (April 6, 1789) and Kant’s letter to Marcus Herz (May 26, 1789): Immanuel Kant, Correspondence, trans. and ed. Arnulf Zweig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 293–294, 311–316. 3. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 44. See David Biale, Eros and the Jews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 4. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 16, 34, 40–41.

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5. Quoted in Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford and Portland, OR: The Littman Library, 2010), 191. 6. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 44–45. 7. See Adam Teller, Money, Power, and Influence in Eighteenth-Century Lithuania, The Jews on the Radziwill Estates (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016). 8. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 2–3. 9. See: Simon Dixon, Katherine the Great (New York: Ecco, 2009). 10. See The Memoirs of Katherine the Great, trans. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom (New York: Random House, 2006). 11. Ibid., 31–32, 93–94, 199–200. 12. Katherine the Great, Selected Letters, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 16–23. Dixon, Katherine the Great, 186. 13. See “Di feierung likhvod Stanislaw oigust paniotovski in der vilner stot-shul,” YIVO Historishe Shriften 1 (1929): 763–764. 14. See Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996); Adam Zamoyski, Poland, A History (London: William Collins, 2009), ch. 12; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1, ch. 6. 15. See John Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia, 1772–1825 (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 35–38. 16. See Meir Balaban, Toldot hayehudim bekrakov ubekazhimiezh, 1304–1868, vol. 2, Hebrew trans. Tsofia Lasman, ed. Ya’aqov Goldberg (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2002), ch. 19. Rakowski’s testament in Polish, ibid., 683–684. 17. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon. 18. Among others, see Raphael Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, dorot ah. aronim, vol. III (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1960), 299–301. 19. The letter from Yehuda Leib Ben Avraham of Pińczów to Jacob Emden, on the day after Passover, 5528 (1768), in Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fol. 449a-451a. And see Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), ch. 7. 20. Emden, Sefer hitavqut. 21. Zikhronot r. dov mibolechow (5483–5561) (1723–1801), ed. M. Wischnitzer (Berlin: Kelal, 1922), 92. 22. Ibid., 87. See also Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 12–14. 23. Zikhronot r. dov mibolechow, 88–89; Israel Halperin, Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, I (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990), 341–525, 440–441. 24. Zikhronot r. dov mibolechow, 89; and see Shaul Stampfer, “The 1764 Census of Polish Jewry,” Bar Ilan: Annual of Bar Ilan University, Studies in Judaica and

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the Humanities, ed. Gershon Bacon and Moshe Rosman (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1989), 41–58. 25. Pinqas va’ad arba’ artsot, 445. 26. Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Zikhronot r. dov mibolechow, 92. 27. Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1769), 209–210; Mendelssohn, Phädon, or On the Immortality of the Soul, trans. Patricia Noble (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 153. 28. Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette (April 21, 1771) in Olivier Bernier, Imperial Mother, Royal Daughter: The Correspondence of Marie Antoinette and Maria Theresa (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986), 31–34. 29. Bernier, Imperial Mother, 62, 66. 30. See Eva Gesine Baur, Rococo (Los Angeles: Taschen, 2007), 72–73; Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting (Toledo: Thames & Hudson, 1999), 160–163; Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 350. 31. David Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 335–339. 32. See James Cook, The Journals, ed. Philip Edwards (London: Penguin, 1999); Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), 495–496. 33. James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: J. Ruthven, 1804), 395–418. 34. Denis Diderot, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, Gutenberg.org, November 9, 2012, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6501/pg6501.html. 35. Mendelssohn, “Open Letter to Lavater” (December 12, 1769) in Michah Gottlieb, ed., Moses Mendelssohn, Writings on Judaism, Christianity and the Bible, trans. Curtis Bowman, Elias Sacks, and Allan Arkush (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 6–12; Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 94, 113–114. 36. Letter of John Morgan, the physician and tourist from America (September 16, 1764), Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, trans. John Fletcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 247–253. 37. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Gutenberg.org, December 28, 2006, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm; letter From Benjamin Franklin to Mary Stevenson (September 14, 1767), Founders Online, accessed April 26, 2022, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin /01-14-02-0152.

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38. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life, trans. John Oxenford (London: George Bell, 1897), 129. 39. See Isser Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, Tradition and Progress, 1715– 1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), ch. 9. 40. See A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1770); A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston (London: B. White, 1770). 41. Max Kohler, “Incidents Illustrative of American Jewish Patriotism,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 4 (1896): 81–99; and see Raphael Mahler, “Yahadut ameriqa vera’ayon shivat tsiyon betequfat hamahapakha haameriqanit,” Zion 15 (1950): 111. 42. See Arthur Cashe, John Wilkes, The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, 310–312; Dan Cruickshank, The Secret History of Georgian London (London: Windmill Books, 2010), 509–534; Jerry White, London in the 18th Century: A Great and Monstrous Thing (London: Vintage Books, 2012), ch. 13. 43. See David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: AngloJewish Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 139–144; Ruderman, “Haim haita ‘haskala’ beanglia: ‘iyun mih.adash,” Zion 62 (1997): 109–131; Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ch. 6. 44. Abraham Tang, A Discourse Addressed to the Minority, by A Primitive Ebrew (London: Not Known, 1770). On the great immigration of thousands of Jews from Poland to Central and Western Europe, see Moses A. Shulvass, From East to West: The Westward Migration of Jews from Eastern Europe during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1971), 79–125. 45. Shimon Bernfeld, Sefer hadema’ot, vol. 3 (Berlin: Eshkol, 1926), 295. 46. Gershon Hundert, “H.ayei hayehudim bepolin-lita bameah ha-18,” in Qiyum veshever, vol. 1, ed. Yisrael Bartal and Yisrael Gutman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), 228; Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, 16–17. 47. See Shirim vezemirot leyom h. anukat beit hakneset hah. adasha asher banu qahal qadosh asher beqopenhagen (Amsterdam: Gerard Johan Janson and Israel Mondovi, 1766); Thorsten Wagner, “Port Jews in Copenhagen: The Sephardi Experience and its Influence on the Development of a Modern Jewish Community in Denmark,” Jewish Culture and History 7, no. 1–2 (2004): 49–60. 48. See Stefan Winkle, Johann Friedrich Struensse: Arzt, Aufklärer und Staatsmann (Stuttgart: Brill, 1983); Winkle, “Johan Friedrich Struensee und das Judentum,” Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte 15 (1986): 45–90; Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 822–826; Jonathan

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Israel, A Revolution of the Mind, Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), 75–77. 49. Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1771 (London: J. Dodsley, 1772), 111. 50. See The Trial of Count Struensee: Late Prime Minister of the King of Denmark, before the Royal Commission of Inquisition at Copenhagen (London: Unknown, 1775), 148; Balthasar Münster, Bekehrungsgeschichte des vormaligen Grafen und Königlichen Dänischen Geheimen Cabinetsministers Johann Friederich Struensee (Copenhagen: Rothens Erben und Prost, 1772), 251–253, 280. 51. The Memoirs of Katherine the Great, trans. Markus Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom (London: Penguin Random House, 2006), 180. 52. See Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, 72–73. 53. Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1768 (London: J. Dodsley, 1769), 22–23. 54. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, 163–171. 55. Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings, ed. Richard Bellany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 40, 71. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), ch. 2. 56. Voltaire, “An Account of the Death of the Chevalier de La Barre,” in Treatise on Tolerance, and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Simon Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 139–148. 57. Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, 243. 58. See Tang, A Discourse Addressed to the Minority. 59. See Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1976), 73–76; Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, 499–500. 60. Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, 242–243. 61. See Joseph Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II (Stuttgart: Bleicher Verlag, 1986), 127–132, 203–207; Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 41–42; Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005), 182–206; H. M. Scott, “Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740–90,” in Enlightened Absolutism, Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. H. M. Scott (London: Macmillan, 1990), 145–187. 62. Goethe, Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life. 63. See Pinqas qehilat franqfort demain (Register of the Community of Frankfurt am Main), MS in the National Library in Jerusalem, Ms. Heb. 662=24, fols. 239–240; Mordecai Halevi Horowitz, Rabanei frankfurt (Jerusalem: Rabbi

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Kook Institute, 1972), 130–131; Ellias Ulmann, “Aus dem Gemeindebuch der hiesigen Israelitischen Gemeinde,” Mittheilingen des Verein für Geschichte und Alterthumskunde in Frankfurt am Main 3 (1868): 283–288. 64. See Marc Saperstein, “In Praise of an Anti-Jewish Empress: Ezekiel Landau’s Eulogy for Maria Theresa,” in Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn: Themes and Texts in Traditional Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1966), 477–478. 65. Goethe, Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life, 122.

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“THEY MADE MY FLESH AND BLOOD FAIR PREY” Tolerance and Fissures in the Walls of Society

Certain members of the European elite gradually became aware that it was wrong to vilify the Jews. Writing in retrospect, Goethe said that the general opinion of the Jews had improved.1 Expectations for such a change, along with the assumption that what was unacceptable should be corrected, influenced people’s perceptions in the age of criticism. Mendelssohn’s success in gaining prestige as an admired philosopher was undoubtedly proof of this change in attitude. In 1766, Kant wrote a letter to Mendelssohn saying that they saw eye to eye with respect to their fields of intellectual interest and guiding principles. The two philosophers had many learned friends in common, and, for example, as a mark of closeness, Kant related that on the basis of Mendelssohn’s recommendation, he had permitted a Jewish student to attend his classes at the University of Königsberg.2

“W ith th e S wor d of Th eir L a nguage, Th e y Str ik e at Fool s”: Th e Ch a ll enge s of E a r ly H a sk a l a h A year later, after the publication of Phaedon, Mendelssohn came to be called the German Socrates. This philosophical work on the immortality of the soul, first published in Berlin in 1767, catapulted Mendelssohn to the pinnacle of European culture. Phaedon framed the ideas of the Enlightenment in the familiar framework of the Platonic dialogue and found many readers. Man, according to Mendelssohn, was destined for greatness. God showers us with His love and has a “benevolent intention,” and the soul is destined for eternal life.3 The publisher, Friedrich Nicolai, presented the book at the fair in Leipzig in May 1767, and by September of that year, the entire edition was sold. In the following two

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decades, twelve more editions were published in German, along with translations into European languages. The philosopher from Berlin was known to thousands of citizens of the Republic of Letters and became a celebrity. His success raised expectations—within him as well—and in an appendix to the third edition, which appeared in 1769, Mendelssohn shared his dream with his readers: the establishment of a commonwealth of the learned, beyond differences in religion. Wisdom has a universal homeland and religion, he wrote, and just as tolerance and brotherhood were celebrated in the political world, the friends of truth must reinforce tolerance and brotherhood among themselves. Differences in religion must no longer separate people, he asserted; we must leave matters of faith to the individual conscience and the satisfaction that each person finds in them, without presuming to judge.4 Yet in that very same year, fissures emerged in Mendelssohn’s feeling of success when his dreams of tolerance were challenged by a pastor from Zurich, Johann Kasper Lavater (1741–1801), who caused for him a setback in historical progress. Lavater was regarded as a citizen of the Republic of Letters and had even visited Mendelssohn’s home. He recommended the book by Charles Bonnet (1720–1793), Philosophical and Critical Inquiries Concerning Christianity, which he had just translated into German, as a bridge to help Mendelssohn cross the lines and convert. With unrestrained missionary zeal to save the Jewish philosopher’s soul, Lavater asked Mendelssohn to justify his new epithet and to do what Socrates would have done—namely to abandon Judaism if he could not refute the arguments justifying Christianity.5 In an open letter to Lavater, Mendelssohn expressed astonishment: “This step on your part has greatly surprised me extraordinarily. From a Lavater I would have expected anything but a public challenge.” He felt that Lavater had betrayed their friendship, and he was deeply insulted. Nevertheless, although the dispute was forced on him, it also offered him an opportunity to present his view of Judaism, which had been formed in the light of humanism and tolerance. Judaism did not proselytize, he emphasized, and did not seek to spread over the entire world, and “all of our rabbis unanimously teach that the written and oral laws that make up our revealed religion are binding only on our nation.”6 Lavater’s challenge distressed and perturbed Mendelssohn. In a personal letter to Prague, he wrote that he felt fear “from the time that I fell into the potholes of the dispute with a Christian minister.” The threat was real: “All the members of that faith, who support it, are arrayed against me.”7 Public opinion among the learned regarded Lavater’s act as unworthy, and he apologized. However, he did not give up his dream of converting Mendelssohn and the rest of the Jews. Mendelssohn wanted only to put the religious dispute behind him,

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as it violated his worldview and the conception of reality that he had developed. In his happy hours of leisure, when he was left alone, he was not interested in being an argumentative person, as that did not suit him. In what appears to be the final cadence, he described his vision of the future as a time of agreement on the principles of natural religion, which would put an end to historical rivalry; how happy would the world be, he said, if everyone accepted and observed the holy truths common to the best Christians and Jews.8 With Phaedon, Mendelssohn opened a channel that also connected him with the early groups of Jewish scholars in Western Europe. As he wrote to Naphtali Herz Wessely, who had just moved from Amsterdam to Hamburg, “I am sending you a small work about the immortality of the soul, which I wrote in the German language.” He apologized if any fault was found with him for seeking philosophical proofs “for a subject whose truth would not be doubted by anyone who is called a Jew, for it is a major tenet in our holy faith.” You might also wonder why I didn’t write the work in Hebrew. Wessely’s reply, in the fall of 1768, was enthusiastic. He noted that Mendelssohn’s achievement was great and immensely important and added that like the biblical Moses, he had shown the proof of their faith (“that man walks in the image of God, and there is judgment for every action”) to the entire world with signs and wonders. Wessely continued that people had already asked him to translate Phaedon into Hebrew, but all he could do was praise it. With admiration, he added, “I doubt whether, in this generation, among the sages of the nation, [there is] an author as eloquent in the German language as you are.”9 Henceforth, not only had a conversation with Kant begun, on a shared foundation, between Berlin and Königsberg, but at the same time, a discussion had begun with an early Maskil, who, like Mendelssohn, advocated “true investigation.” This early encounter with Phaedon had great importance on the history of Jewish culture. It was a sign of the birth of a Jewish community of Enlightenment, which, two decades later, would demand a leadership position in the revolutionary trend of removing the monopoly on knowledge, norms, and the right to lead the community from the rabbinical elite.10 Wessely was a central figure in the small circles of authors and poets, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, for whom developing and expanding the Hebrew language to include belles lettres was a reformist mission as well as personal pleasure. In the 1760s in Amsterdam, a group of early Maskilim met for conversation and study. Among them were David Franco Mendes (1713–1792), a translator and the adaptor of the biblical play, The Reward of Atalia, inspired by the French playwright Racine and the Italian Pietro Metastasio; poet and prolific preacher Isaac Hacohen Belinfanti; medical student Samuel Baruch Benavente; David Wagennar, who offered to

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translate Mendelssohn’s response to Lavater; Solomon of Dubno, who was born in Volhynia in the Ukraine and whose whole world was the Hebrew book; and, of course, Wessely himself. They gladly accepted guests like physician Judah Horowitz of Vilna (1734–1797), who arrived in Amsterdam in 1766 to print his book, The Columns of the House of Judah.11 These early Maskilim displayed mastery of Hebrew poetry and rhymed, ornamented prose, and they shared in the effort to renew the study of philosophy and “the wisdoms” (the Hebrew term for the sciences and fields of secular knowledge in general).12 Horowitz described the life of this band of men, who were thirsty for knowledge: “There they sat and dealt with books of intelligence . . . and sometimes they went to stroll in the Orchard, for knowledge of the truth of religion . . . they studied eloquence and fine moral teachings, from the most pious philosophers . . . and they contemplated the works of the awesome Lord, in all that He created in His world.”13 The leaders of early Haskalah trod the line between traditional religious belief and science and “investigation,” and they found it difficult to camouflage this fundamental tension with eloquent language. Mendelssohn, who praised Horowitz’s The Columns of the House of Judah as a contribution to redeeming “the loss of wisdom and virtues among us,” promoting rational thought in the spirit of Maimonides, apparently did not sense the atmosphere of crisis that permeated it.14 In the worldview expressed in Horowitz’s book, threats loom from opposing “sects.” On the one hand, Kabbalists, who practice ecstatic piety, succeed in deceiving the community of believers and counterfeiting true religion, while on the other hand, the sect of radical philosophers makes a mockery of religion and encourages heresy. Foolishness darkens clear, rational thought, and the opposition to “wisdoms” is destructive. In his opinion, salvation could come only from authors like himself, who “with the sword of their language they strike at fools . . . And with the dispersal of the clouds of idiocy, the light of the intellect will be revealed and shine.”15 For the first time, he openly proclaimed the program of what would be organized as the Haskalah movement among the Jews of Europe. In The Hague circle of scholars, Abraham Ben Shlomo struggled in 1768 to overcome what seemed to be the contradiction between the new science and the tenets of the religion. Two of his sons had died of smallpox, and he was determined to convince people of the advantages of inoculation and the infliction of mild infection to produce immunization. One after another, he dismissed the arguments based on faith (that one must not interfere with the decrees of God as to who will live and who will die or that inoculation is proof of weak faith in Providence), and he composed a Halakhic and medical response that

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permitted inoculation.16 Initially, his article was not published, though a copy was sent to Mendelssohn. Fifteen years later, when Abraham Ben Shlomo was already living in London, an expanded version of the pamphlet appeared, titled “A New Cure from the Physicians of Our Day, New and Recently Arrived, that Our Fathers Had Not Imagined.” His introduction became a campaign to convince his readers to welcome the inoculation against smallpox as demonstrating a decidedly modern consciousness. Those who used the new remedy would save their life, and those who rejected progress were ignoring an epoch of “thousands of marvelous inventions” that turned imagination into reality; everything seemed possible. In reference to the hot air balloons of the 1780s, he professed the superiority of his contemporaries over their predecessors, “for the ancients did not speak at all about the towers that float in the air, and I wish to say that they did not imagine that man would make floating vessels to soar in the air up to the firmament of the sky . . . and with our eyes we have seen that it has been done in our day.” In the presence of scientific innovations that could not be denied, in his opinion, the claim of the conservatives “that our ancestors did not imagine this” had lost its validity.17 In the beginning of the eighteenth century, conveying scientific knowledge in the Hebrew language to overcome the unacceptable lack of “wisdoms” was already the most important mission of the early Maskilim. When medical student George Levison (Mordecai Gumpel Schnaber) took the task upon himself in London, he went out of his way to prove, without doubt or hesitation, that science does not contradict the Torah. Levisohn was born in Berlin, and thirsty for knowledge, he enjoyed a successful medical career in the cities of Western Europe, becoming a professor in Stockholm. His Hebrew book, Maamar hatora vehah.okhma (Essay on Torah and Wisdom), is not only a systematic presentation of areas of science such as mathematics and physics, but also a severe critique of the failures of the rabbinical leadership, which did its utmost to prevent “the wisdoms” from penetrating the world of knowledge. With unrestrained fury, he protested against the ignorance, neglect, and discrimination resulting from intentional policy. It could not be that the Torah would contradict science, he emphasized, and the ancients “did not order us at all to distance ourselves from the study of wisdoms.” But in present generations, “the Torah and its study has fallen into the hands of men without intelligence.” Out of folly and fear that exposure to science and philosophy would destroy faith, the rabbis blocked every entry for them and slandered those who studied them in an effort “to trample the skeptical abomination and heresy so that it would be disgusting and to make it stink in the eyes of the masses.”18 Maamar hatora vehah.okhma presented a critical voice and sought to change the world of Jewish knowledge from top to

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bottom and to teach rational thinking, and it already represented a mature Enlightenment position, offering an alternative to the values of the rabbinical elite.

“Th e Gr e ate st Wa nton ne ss of th e Gener ation, Such a s Ne v er H a s Be en”: Se x ua lit y a n d Cr i m e Although, beginning in the 1760s, the presence of Maskilim, who began to modernize the Jewish library, increased in several communities in Western and Central Europe, these scholars were well aware of their weakness as an elitist minority whose voice did not reach the masses. Levison, in despair, emphasized that “I know these words won’t please the foolish,” and Judah Horowitz did not conceal the fears of the intellectuals: “The masses are like wolves, hungry to pounce on the honest and good, as if they were mosquitoes and flies.” In his view, only “the wise” are the soul of the people, and “were it not for them, the human race would be orphaned from humanity.”19 The fame of Mendelssohn, “the German Socrates,” and the growth of a new intellectual elite who were heedful of science and philosophy and identified with the ethos of progress and humanism only partially represented the pulse of life, the aspirations and tribulations of most of the men and women of the time. Goings-on in the intimate darkness of bedrooms and places of entertainment beyond the reach of supervision continued to threaten the community leadership. Poor servant women were particularly vulnerable. The register of the warden, Isaac Frank of Altona, listed eight babies who were born between 1765 and 1767 to “prostitutes” out of wedlock. For example, the lay leaders of the community debated as to who must bear the expense of burying the dead infant of the “prostitute”; Deborah, a servant and wet nurse who gave birth to a “bastard,” placed it in the hands of a Christian woman and fled for her life.20 In 1769, ten babies who were born to unmarried mothers were circumcised, and preacher Zerakh Eidlitz, who warned with dread against this violation of the social order, was convinced that this sexual permissiveness was unprecedented. The delinquent women gave the community a bad name, and who knew the number of girls who were born out of wedlock? The reins of religious discipline must be tightened, now more than ever: “The greatest wantonness of the generation, such as never has been, was in this year.” News and rumors about individuals and groups who passed through the walls dividing Jewish life from the general urban realm circulated orally and in writing, like the letter of Jacob Emden about “those who go in darkness to the theaters, where they warm their hearts with ‘the wine of the condemned’ [Amos 2:8] and amuse themselves with the sons and daughters of strangers.”21

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The regulations of the community of Pressburg warned against “the many who break out, who pay no heed to supervision and throw off the yoke of the kingdom of heaven,” and they absolutely forbade the men and women, including servants, to go to the theater and to play cards or billiards in coffeehouses.22 Similarly, from 1758 to 1765, the Sephardi community of Amsterdam dealt severely with three cases of forbidden relations and of poor women who were abandoned by their husbands and gave birth out of wedlock. Yosef Kaplan estimated that these cases, which were publicized and in which the women and men were excommunicated, were only the tip of the iceberg in the “panic of adultery.” Moral laxity as an expression of a change in values and the rise of the desire for individual satisfaction in intimate relations was a widespread phenomenon.23 A Halakhic query addressed to Rabbi Ezekiel Landau in 1770 presents a case of sexual delinquency that took place in the very heart of the Torah elite. A scholar, “very diligent in the study of Torah,” who lived in the home of a wealthy family and was apparently employed as a teacher, had sexual relations with the lady of the house for three years, until he married her daughter. Must he tell the betrayed husband (who was now his father-in-law) that his wife (the scholar’s mother-in-law) was in fact a wanton woman who had slept with him while she was married to another man, who, according to Jewish law, had to separate from her? Great concern about sexual laxity was evident here (“especially because he continued in this sin for three years in succession . . . and certainly the times he had intercourse with her are innumerable”). However, in contrast to the severe attitude toward “prostituted” servant women and “wanton men,” this case was handled with great circumspection. Identifying signs were disguised, and the rabbi considered every possible Halakhic and social channel to keep the episode in the dark. Both the rabbi who asked the question and Landau, who answered it, were fearful of harming the scholar’s social standing and showed compassion for him, as “now he has been aroused to repent, and happy is he, that his Torah rose up and did not sink into impurity.” It would best for the adulterer to tell the husband, in private, that his wife had been unfaithful, but he was not required to confess that he was the one who slept with her. Preference was given to class considerations, as those involved were “prominent people whose sons were important Torah scholars, of a precious family, and care should be taken against injuring the family.” The scholar who “had sinned with a married woman” was required to undergo ceremonies of repentance and remorse, to contribute to charity, and to fast in a manner that would not harm his weak body. “He must not look at women,” and for three years, he needed to refrain as much as possible from drinking wine and coffee and not sleep in a bed

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with covers. In the same breath, he was praised for “the marvels of his diligence in study day and night” and for making “no idle conversation at all.” Needless to say, it occurred to no one to reveal to the recently married young woman that her husband, a rabbinical scholar, had been her mother’s lover for a long time.24 Social and cultural gaps grew deeper, and the contrast between refined life and the rough and violent underworld colored the picture of the period. The Breslau community, for example, which was under Prussian rule, was still disturbed by a criminal episode that flowed into it from neighboring Poland. It was required to share in the expense of imprisoning Daniel Moshe, a Jew who was convicted of taking part in a particularly violent crime that took place in 1763 in a small Polish village. A gang of Jewish robbers attacked a flour mill, murdered seven people during the robbery, and burned down the mill. Some of the perpetrators converted to Christianity, and one of them testified about the part played by Moshe in the severe acts of violence. After harsh tortures, he managed to escape, crossed the border into Prussia, and was arrested in Breslau. The judicial system dealt with the events of that murderous night in Poland for years. In 1767, the king signed the verdict: life imprisonment with hard labor while shackled in iron chains. However, his wife’s appeal and testimony to a solid alibi led to his exoneration after eight long years.25 The backyard of the Jews of London also cast a shadow over the community’s success in establishing itself. Todd Endelman found that during the 1760s, the number of Jews sentenced to death in London—thirty-five—was twice that of the previous decade, and this trend increased in severity during the 1770s. Poverty and immigration from Holland and Germany caused what the people of the time perceived as a growing wave of Jewish crime. More and more Jews made a living from buying and selling stolen goods, and the lay leaders and rabbis of the community did their utmost to condemn the delinquents and isolate them from the community, to defend its good name. In the spring of 1766, close cooperation with the authorities developed, especially with John Fielding (1721–1780), a lower court judge on criminal matters. Two community leaders, Naphtali Franks (1715–?) and Naphtali Hart Meyers (1711–1788), initiated the excommunication of Jewish criminals who, in their opinion, violated the laws of the religion as well as the obligation to obey the laws of the kingdom, and they offered rewards to anyone who provided information leading to the conviction of “our evil brethren.” They went out of their way to emphasize to the authorities that there were just “a few disreputable people who receive stolen property . . . knaves who were like a plague for the entire community.”26 The undeniable Jewish identity of the Chelsea gang frustrated efforts to clear the name of the Jews of London. On the night of June 11, 1771, nine

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Jewish robbers, armed with pistols and knives, broke in through the window of Hutchins’s farm in the village of Chelsea, near London, terrorizing Mrs. Hutchins for several hours. The trial, held in Old Bailey, attracted enormous attention. The widow Hutchins testified that she heard her dog bark and called her servant woman, but then several men broke in and captured her. One of them, who was called the “doctor,” pushed her onto a chair and covered her head with her petticoat, which he pulled up. One of them shouted, “Whore, if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll cut your throat!” She was seized with dreadful fear. They demanded money and looked in her drawers. She heard gunshots, and one of the attackers hit her and wounded her lips. The robbers handcuffed Hutchins, stole her watch and her purse, murdered servant Joseph Slew, and fled with cash, cloth, and silver vessels. On the day after the robbery, items were secretly sold to another Jew, Shlomo Lazarus, who had a criminal background. The incident was considered as having crossed a red line in crime in the London region. The Crown offered a reward for information leading to arrest of the gang, and the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities offered rewards of their own. The press magnified the affair as a shocking event that only proved that the Jews were sworn criminals. Daniel Isaac, a poor Jew who had just arrived in London and didn’t know English, had refused to take part in the robbery, because his wife forbade him to remain in contact with the gang. He was the one who turned them in. The identity of the robbers was revealed, and six men were put on trial in December. The leaders of the gang were brothers, Asher and Levi Weil, who had immigrated from Holland. Levi Weil claimed to be a physician who had studied in Leiden, and he behaved with the manners of a gentleman, which surprised the judges. He denied the accusation and claimed in his own favor that he had always treated his patients with decency and respect. He remained a cipher. Was he a violent criminal imposter or indeed a learned physician who had assimilated into the culture of the great city? The Weil brothers and two other members of the gang were condemned to death by hanging at Tyburn on December 12, 1771. The newspapers reported that their wives and children were invited to the prison to bid them farewell, and at the foot of the gallows, the four men sang to themselves. Their bodies were not buried but delivered to medical students for dissection.27 The court clerk who read the verdict issued a warning not to exploit the affair in an effort to avoid attaching a negative label to the Jews of London and expressed the hope that no one, out of ignorance, would besmirch an entire nation because of the misdeeds of a few. Nevertheless, for years this was an excuse for popular harassment. One man of the time said that to pick on a Jew was regarded as good fun. When a Jew was seen in the street, people often

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shouted, “Go to Chelsea!”—very often this was a sign for an attack. Not a few Jews were chased in the street. Insults were shouted at them, they were kicked and tied up, their beards were pulled, and people spat at them. Although the Jewish leaders disowned their criminal brethren, this did not moderate the hostility. On Saturday, December 7, 1771, before the verdict was carried out, everyone who took part in the robbery in Chelsea was excommunicated. In their great embarrassment, the leaders of the great synagogue repeatedly emphasized that the criminals were foreigners who defiled the Jewish religion with their actions, and they sought to tighten their control and restrict harmful immigration to England.28

“Sh e W ent a n d Cr i ed Ou t w ithou t Ce a se”: Th e Dispu te ov er th e Di vorce of K l e v e When Itzik Neiburg’s ship reached the port of Harwich in early September of 1766, he felt relieved, secure, and liberated. At the end of the voyage from Germany through Holland to the shores of England, Neiburg testified before the rabbis of the Ashkenazi community who interrogated him that he had become a “different man” and all that he had done in the recent past had been done in error. For a few months, England was a refuge for him. He had left a young wife behind in her parents’ home in Bonn. She was anguished, wept bitterly, and could not understand what had happened to her. The preceding few weeks had been the most shocking and humiliating in the life of Leah Gunzhausen. Within a few days in the month of August, she had gone from feeling the joyous excitement of a bride at her wedding to experiencing the heartbreak of a wounded and despised woman whose husband had divorced her. Everything had been prepared for the proper marriage uniting two wealthy Ashkenazi families from the communities of Mannheim and Bonn, on the Rhine. The groom had visited the bride’s house twice “to take pleasure and embraces with his in-laws and the bride,” and the retinue of the bride’s family had gone to Mannheim five days before the wedding to resolve the final financial disagreements. The marriage took place as planned on the evening of 8 Elul (August 13, 1766), the groom had done his duty (“they brought him to bed, and he had intercourse according to the commandment and left”), and the bride lost her virginity. But then everything went wrong. On Saturday morning, just two days after the wedding, Neiburg fled from the house, taking silver coins from the dowry with him. This was scandalous; not only had the groom disappeared, but he had also violated the Sabbath. His pursuers found him hiding in a village, confused and panicked. For a few days, it still seemed they could smooth

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out the potholes, and the couple traveled to Bonn. However, at the end of the week, Neiburg announced he wanted a divorce. He tried to explain that his wife was repugnant to him, and, beyond that, he was in great danger if he remained in the country. He wanted to go to England, and if a divorce was not arranged immediately, he threatened to leave anyway and abandon Leah as a married woman unable to remarry (“she will sit until her hair turns white”).29 Shimon Copenhagen, the scholar who accompanied the bride’s family and was present at almost all the tense moments, retraced the affair as an involved eyewitness. On Sunday morning, only ten days after the wedding, he told Leah, in her parents’ presence, what the groom demanded. They were thunderstruck and could not restrain their tears: “They wept that they had come to this degree, and Leah’s eyes were soft, and tears were on her cheeks without cease.” Apprehension that Neiburg would flee again, this time to another country, left no doubt that they had to agree to a prompt divorce. As per Neiburg’s request, they immediately traveled on a riverboat from Bonne to Kleve, on the border of Holland, where the rabbi of the community, Israel Lifschitz, agreed to arrange a divorce on that very day (August 26). They also settled the monetary arrangements involved with the dissolution of the marriage. This was not a hasty action, the rabbi later said in defense of himself. He spoke with the groom, who declared absolutely that “it is impossible [for me] to remain with [the bride] and it is necessary for me to go overseas.” He implored the young man not to take hasty action and cut himself off from his family, but he said that if he returned to Mannheim, he would be killed. The atmosphere was gloomy. Leah accepted the bill of divorce and sank into melancholy. The next day, Neiburg wanted to say goodbye to her, but she refused to see him. “Why is your face sad?” he asked. “I am honest, and if the Lord prospers me, I will give presents to the children who will be born with another man.” Just two weeks after the wedding, the divorced bride returned to her parents’ home, and Neiburg continued from Kleve to Nijmegen on his way to England. He was to stay there only five months before returning to Germany and asking to annul the bill of divorce.30 Neuburg and Gunzhausen did not imagine that their names and every detail of their lives from those two weeks would become so public and exposed to view. The boundary between the private and public were erased, and it seemed that no one in the circles of the rabbinical elite between England and Poland was ignorant of the details of their story. From 1766 to 1768, the young man and woman stood at the center of one of the bitterest inner disputes among the Jews of the eighteenth century. Pressured by the groom’s father, Eliezer Neiburg, who was not present at the divorce ceremony, the rabbi of Mannheim

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addressed Lifschitz, demanding the revocation of the writ of divorce because the husband was depressed and mad, “he was like a fool, with no mind,” and he was not responsible for his actions. The strongest support for this claim came from Abraham Lisa of Frankfurt, who questioned how Rabbi Lifschitz could have approved the divorce when it was so clear that the groom was in the grip of melancholy, unstable, and incompetent. The rabbi of Frankfurt reproached the rabbi of Kleve, demanding correction of the error and issuing a proclamation annulling the divorce and determining that Gunzhausen was an abandoned wife.31 At that moment, the affair of the Divorce of Kleve exploded, and its reverberations were strongly heard throughout the networks of the rabbinical elite in responsa, letters, decrees, the hearing of testimony, and proclamations from Amsterdam, London, Metz, Prague, Brody, and other communities. At bottom this was apparently a Halakhic question of whether the divorcing husband, Neiburg, was sane, so that the divorce was valid, or whether he had gone mad, so that it was void. What ought to have remained as an intimate, family tragedy that shattered the lives of two young people went beyond Halakhic discourse. Just as the challenge to the validity of a divorce voiced by Mordecai Hamburger sixty years earlier led to a split in the Ashkenazi community of London and as the Emden-Eybeschütz dispute in the previous decade became a struggle for power and prestige, this affair also revealed the weaknesses in the fabric of the rabbinical elite. Lifschitz gathered evidence in Mannheim to the effect that Neiburg was entirely sane, and he asked for the opinion of the rabbis of other communities in Germany to bolster his confidence that he had acted promptly. But the rabbis of Frankfurt launched a stubborn, bellicose, and uncompromising campaign for their authority to prevail. A letter sent to Bonn warned that Leah was still considered a married woman. A proclamation in that spirit was read in Mannheim declaring that “in our generation no one has been heard to defy [the rabbis of Frankfurt]” and that such a violation of discipline was not to be countenanced. Emden, who was informed about the matter by his son, the rabbi of the Hambro community in London, argued that the rabbis of Frankfurt had been misled by the false arguments of the divorcing groom’s father, and he ruled that Leah was free to remarry. Landau joined the growing camp of those who supported Lifschitz. In a sermon in Prague, he declared that in such a case, one must not consider the honor and status of the rabbis. He also insinuated that the rabbis of Frankfurt had been pressured by the lay leaders; therefore, their words were of no value. The rabbis of Frankfurt could not accept the broad front that had opened against them, and their responses were severe. In letters

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and proclamations, they protested, noting that they had been shamed and their honor had been injured, as had the rabbi, the religious judges, and their status as a central community in Europe, “which from time immemorial [was] the height of beauty and the delight of the entire country, and from us came Torah and instruction for all the Jews, and we have always stood our ground and erected barriers for the good of all the Jews.” The offense taken at what appeared to be a rejection of their authority to represent the Jewish people was intolerable. Henceforth, those who disagreed would be held accountable, and Rabbi Landau, his sons, and his sons-in-law, for example, would never receive any appointment in Frankfurt. The high point in the dispute was doubtless the scornful response that arrived from Poland. A group of rabbis had assembled at the fair in Brody and signed a decision permitting the woman to remarry and stating that it was forbidden to challenge the divorce. That document was thrown into a fire that was kindled in the courtyard of the Frankfurt synagogue, and the proclamation that was read at that event (February 21, 1768) spared no words of contempt and slander. The proclamation noted that it would be inconceivable to keep silent in the face of the coarse impertinence of those who challenged the rabbi’s ruling and that among those responsible were dubious people “whose nature and discourse no one knows.” Therefore, the rabbis asserted, “we have agreed that the letter from the rabbis of Poland . . . shall be burned in public in the synagogue courtyard before everyone’s eyes . . . and also to show to all of the Jews that their words are thought of as nothing, null, and void.”32 No less important than the intensity of public debate was the personal, injured voice of those who saw themselves as the victims of injustice. Almost simultaneously, Lifschitz and Copenhagen resolved not to be silenced, and they both published polemical works in support of the divorce; the works contained most of the sources for the episode. The rabbi of Kleve was beaten and humiliated: “They made my flesh and blood fair prey . . . and they darkened the world for me.” By what right had they trespassed on his area of authority and challenged the writ of divorce he had issued? With pain and anger, he defied them: “Tell me why you have the power!” He further asked: How are you preferable to me? How have you dared to demand that only your opinion should be heard in Frankfurt, as if the world belonged only to you? There were thousands of communities, “and we have never heard that it occurred to any community to take huge steps on the heads of the holy nation in other places.” Copenhagen could identify with these wounded feelings. He said he had been attacked with no justification, his name had been slandered, and he had

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been accused of responsibility for the whole mess: “I was made a target for arrows and everyone became accustomed to talking about me.” The heedless proclamations had spread slander against him even among ignorant men and children. At first he bowed his head: “I walked about bitterly in the rage of my spirit.” He didn’t want war, but such a great injustice cried out until he could no longer keep silence. He stated that what ultimately made him speak up was the fate of Gunzhausen and his feeling of obligation toward her, after he had seen what had happened to her: “Even if I wished to keep silent, the judgment of a young woman and her outcry, does not let me keep silent, for it was bitter to her, and she went and cried out without cease, until Simon [i.e., the writer] swore to her that he would marry her to a decent man after publication of the permission from the sages of Israel in print.” He wondered how they could “treat daughters of Israel like prisoners of war, to be tied up until the day of their death and to extinguish their ember.” The bride’s voice had been silenced during the entire affair, until Leah’s father opened his tormented heart. In a heartbreaking letter, he compared her situation, which was subject to an insensitive play of powers within the religious establishment, to that of a helpless lamb that needed to be saved from lions roaring for prey. “I weep for the disqualification of my miserable abandoned daughter, sad of heart,” who dwells in my house, he wrote, adding in rebellious spirit that he would do everything he could to prevent her from being bound in shackles as an abandoned wife. “I do not care about the decisions of Frankfurt and I will not obey their decrees,” he wrote.33 You will recall that in London, Neiburg announced that he had returned to himself and was cured of the temporary insanity that had gripped him. In the spring of 1767, he even appeared in Frankfurt and asked for the divorce to be revoked, but nothing changed, and the dispute continued to heat up. But how did ordinary Jews react when they saw documents by rabbis go up in flames and heard the imprecations voiced in the proclamations? Emden, a veteran of disputes who was apprehensive about the status of the rabbis, understood that once again deep fissures had opened up in the edifice whose preservation was so precious to him. In a letter to Lifschitz, he lamented the mortal blow to rabbinical scholars dealt by the dispute over the divorce and the diminution of their status. “Not to give voice to making the Torah shallow or making two Torahs, perish the thought,” he wrote with worry, and his heart cringed in the face of mockery by the masses: “The ones who sit in the gate will speak and utter shouts, pleased at the discomfiture of Torah scholars and dismiss them with their language and shake their heads against them and the accuser will be aroused . . . to despise and scorn and berate them.”34

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You R ebell ed aga inst th e R a bbi!: Th e Dispu te in V i lna Bitter and prolonged local disputes such as the one that tore apart the Vilna community in the last third of the century also contributed to a loss of confidence in the traditional leadership. On November 6, 1767, Rabbi Shmuel Ben Avigdor (1720–1790) lodged a severe complaint with the judicial authorities in Trakai and with the vice governor of the district. The rabbi, who had been appointed in midcentury to serve for life as the religious leader of the Jews of Vilna, demanded considerable financial compensation—ten thousand Polish zlotys—from the Kahal, the elected lay leaders who had been harassing him for a number of years, persecuting him, and violating the conditions of his contract. He complained that they hated him, stood in his way, caused him financial damage, and imposed restrictive conditions on him. This was one of the twists of the dispute between the rabbi and the Kahal that split the 3,500 Jews of Vilna into rival parties. The rabbi’s opponents declared war against him. A group of householders plotted to overthrow him. They said that he did not behave like a scholar, that no candle was visible at night in the window of his room to show his diligence, and that he was corrupt, taking bribes and striving for power and authority. His very appointment was regarded as a shady business, and his exceptional rabbinical contract bound the lay leadership. The rabbinate in Vilna had been purchased by a dominant and powerful figure in the community, Judah Safra; for a large sum of money, he had brought about the appointment of his son-in-law. The contract granted “the merchant rabbi” many opportunities to further enrich himself, and it was not limited, as was customary, to three years. Indeed, Shmuel Ben Avigdor was a very wealthy man who also had commercial interests in Danzig and Königsberg in which he invested a good deal of his time. Hundreds of documents describe the constant friction, plots, excommunications, and rivalry for the centers of power every year in appointing lay leaders to communal office.35 The dispute expanded to other places in Lithuania when the rabbi asked for help from the community of Grodno, where they decreed that a “distortion” had been made with “terrible and questionable actions and marvels of persecution.” In the summer of 1770, the leaders of the community declared that the Jews of Vilna had rebelled against the rabbi, and they demanded of them “to reconcile the honor of the great sage, may his light shine, and console him . . . and because his honor was decreased, they must see to increasing and enhancing his honor,” whereas the Kahal of Vilna found full sympathy in the community of Pinsk.36

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Disputes within the frameworks of Jewish autonomy in Poland were not, of course, exceptional. We have already observed complaints about nepotism, class indifference, domineering, and egoism in the course of the century, and we have heard preachers condemning despotic leaders without social sensitivity. The reproach published by Shmuel Ben Eliezer from Kalvarija, Lithuania, in his book, Darkhei no’am (The Paths of Pleasantness), was particularly vehement and pointed. It was published at the beginning of the dispute in Vilna and scolded the lay leaders (“officers of Sodom”) for their corruption and arbitrary hearts, but, even more, he castigated the rabbis of the community. He wrote: “For our many sins, in these generations, we find that the rabbi who was appointed as a lawgiver for them did not himself behave properly.” The man responsible for religious discipline had failed in his duty, “for all his actions were done to find favor in the eyes of the ministers who maintain him and who appointed him as their rabbi, so that all the merit of his deeds, the Torah and the commandments, was not for their own sake but to glorify himself in public and to be favored in their eyes, so that he would lengthen the days of his monarchy, and he and his sons would be a minister and ruler over them.”37 However, in this case in Lithuania, it appears that beyond conflicts of interest and the struggle for income, appointments, and honor, the dispute revolved around a rabbi who demonstrated his independence from the wealthy householders and, in a stubborn struggle, refused to let them infringe on his rights. The balance of power in the affair underwent many crises. As the struggle grew in intensity during the 1780s, tension between the classes also intensified. The broad group of “the masses,” distanced from the centers of power, joined the rabbi in opposition to what seemed to be a tyrannical oligarchy. As with the divorce from Kleve, this dispute also detracted from the status of the community rabbi as a spiritual authority.

Th e “Sect” of H a si di m Fir e s th e I m agination At that time, the new Hasidism began to attract attention. David of Maków (?–1814), one of the movement’s fiercest opponents, documented it industriously and determined the exact date of the formation of the movement: “Behold the beginning of the publicity of that sect was in the year 5526 [1766],” when a court was formed around the maggid Dov Ber in Międzyrzec, which became a goal for pilgrimage. Hasidism began to develop as an open movement of religious awakening that did not demand absolute commitment. The first circles were formed from the visitors—men seeking inspiration, guidance, and spiritual experience and who frequented Hasidic leaders. “Several rabbis

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and great scholars traveled to him,” David of Maków recounted, “and a few of them accepted some of his path, but they did not abandon their holy ways or diligence in study of the holy Torah and other honest matters.” Some were even disappointed, like the rabbi of the community of Pinsk, Raphael Cohen (1722–1803), who played a role, starting in the 1780s, in confronting trends toward secularization while serving as the rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek. He “traveled to [the maggid of Międzyrzec] and did not accept him at all.”38 The Hasidic tradition presented the maggid as the successor of the Ba’al Shem Tov, but, despite his dominance until his death in late 1772 and the disciples who stayed in his court for a while, no movement with a single center and accepted authoritative leader was formed. Levi Yitsh of Berdyczow (1740–1809), Elimelech of Leżajsk (1717–1786), and Shneur Zalman of Lyadi (1745–1812) were all associated with the maggid of Międzyrzec and became prominent and independent leaders of Hasidism. Aharon of Karlin (1736–1772) formed a following of his own in Lithuania while the maggid was still alive, as did both Abraham of Kalisk (1741–1810) in White Russia, who gathered “men after my heart” around him, and Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk (1730–1788), in Minsk. They also “formed prayer groups in Vilna in fellowships they called Hasidim,” David of Maków reported about the organization of local cells of the movement around separate prayer groups. The teachings of Hasidim began to appear in print only in the 1780s, and their identity as a movement was only consolidated gradually in their own minds and in the eyes of their disciples and adversaries. Seekers of “the new Torah” went from center to center, and the dispersed character of Hasidism, composed of sects and courts, was preserved from then on.39 In 1764, the traveler Simch.a Ben Yehoshu’a of Zalozits encountered a band of Hasidim led by two members of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s circle, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Przemyśl and Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka (1680–1765), who reached Galați and Istanbul on their way to the Land of Israel, and they ended up sharing the excitement of their voyage in the same ship. At that time, Simch.a Ben Yehoshu’a already saw that they were a group in their own right.40 In the late 1760s, several Hasidic leaders gained a presence in the communal arena, and their authority was recognized. For example, Aharon of Karlin drafted tax regulations that were instituted in the winter of 1769 in the community of Nesvizh, giving them special authority. From the way the regulations are written, he clearly saw himself as an emissary for the benefit of the community. These regulations defend the weak members of the society, asserting that those who try to oppress them “strip the skin from the poor children of Israel.” Aharon of Karlin’s authority to threaten with punishments

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was inspired by the maggid of Międzyrzec, whom he declared to be a senior religious leader and perhaps the greatest of them all.41 Emissaries from the centers of Hasidism and rumors that were circulated about events there aroused interest and helped the new movement expand. Solomon Maimon, for example, who certainly represented the threat entailed by the deist philosophers, was one of the young men who made a pilgrimage to the court of the maggid of Międzyrzec. Still in his twenties and frustrated, he was supporting himself as a teacher. Before crossing the border to Germany, Maimon considered joining “the sect of the new Hasidim.” Though recently he had tested the boundaries of discipline with secret rebellion against the obligations of the religion, Maimon did not cease looking for religious meaning and inspiring figures who would rescue him from his meager and unsatisfying life. Like other Polish Jews, he was disappointed by the rabbinical establishment. In his autobiography, he wrote that he was of a somewhat strong religious disposition and observed in most of the rabbis a good deal of pride, quarrelsomeness, and other evil qualities; they became objects of dislike on that account. Therefore, he sought as a model only those among them who were commonly known by the name of Chasidim (the Pious). A young man who had returned from Międzyrzec shared his experiences with him, and he became curious and enthusiastic. The ranks were open, and the new society invited young men to join. It seemed that what he had heard about them fit in exactly with the yearnings of his heart: “Anyone who felt the drive for perfection and didn’t know how to satisfy it or how to overcome the obstacles in his way, needed only turn to one of the leaders, and he was eo ipso a member of the society.” The young man told him that the Hasidic rebbes “could see straight into the human heart and discover everything what was hidden in its most secret folds; they could predict the future; they could make what was far away present.” He noted, “The stranger’s account of the sect fired my imagination.” At the end of one of his terms as a teacher, apparently in 1770/1771, Maimon did not return home but immediately set out on the two-week-long journey to Międzyrzec. The court was already full of visitors, and excitement grew as the Sabbath meal approached and “a large number of important men from all over the region gathered for the occasion. The great man finally appeared, cutting an impressive figure, dressed as he was in a white Atlas robe.” Maimon heard a surprising personal reference to himself in the rebbe’s sermon, and while he was at the court, he apparently also took part in ecstatic prayer, with the intention of “stripping away corporeality.” For a short time he was enchanted by the maggid and by the feeling of fellowship in the young group.42

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More than two decades later, Maimon sought to decipher the secret of the attraction of Hasidism from the critical viewpoint of the Enlightenment. In contrast to ascetic pietism and the demand for diligence in Torah study, the leaders of the new groups offered action within the world and not outside of it, and they devoted attention to the individual. Their message was that “man must satisfy all his bodily wants, and seek to enjoy the pleasures of sense, so far as may be necessary for the development of our feelings,” and to worship God with prayer with intention. This also offered great relief to scholars, who had been educated in the ethos of devotion to study and intellectual effort, when they heard that “fasts and vigils and constant study of the Talmud are not only useless, but even prejudicial to that cheerfulness of spirit which is essential to genuine piety.” No wonder “young people forsook parents, wives and children, and went in troops to visit these superiors, and hear from their lips the new doctrine.” Ultimately, he himself was repelled by what he saw in Międzyrzec and withdrew with disgust. He told how he had halted on the verge of conversion and how he was disillusioned. He quickly learned that the sect exploited the innocence of the Hasidism. In his memoirs, he said that he discovered that the wondrous deeds and knowledge of hidden things were based on simple deceit and that vulgar ceremonies took place in the court. When the wife of one of the Hasidim gave birth to a girl, the maggid cried out, “He ought to be whipped.” He pointed out that “a trait of these, as of all uncultivated men, is their contempt of the other sex.” The inclination of the Polish Jews for idleness, visions, and miracles, and “the great burden of the ceremonial law, which the new doctrine promised to lighten,” explained the success of Hasidism in captivating their hearts.43 As Maimon’s interpretation of the phenomenon of Hasidism expanded, it revealed, almost in real time, its dual and contradictory meaning in the eyes of someone who experienced it directly. When Maimon sketched the outlines of the cultural struggle, he was like a Jewish Voltaire. He was an angry critic of superstition and of the cunning religious leaders. He also painted Hasidism as an innovative and decidedly subversive movement and as a contemporary of the Enlightenment. The Hasidic revolution might have led to replacing the rabbinic elite. “This sect was a kind of secret society (with respect to both its purpose and means). If not for the extreme behavior of some of its members, which exposed its weak points and gave ammunition to its enemies, the sect might well have gained control over the whole nation, producing what would have been one of its greatest revolutions.” In his opinion, its historical place in eighteenth-century Europe was similar to that of the Freemasons and similar societies. Just as the secret society of the Illuminati, founded by Johann

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Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) in Bavaria in 1776, had the goal of educating the masses to be ethical and happy people and of enlightening their thought, so, too, did Hasidism: “Their goal was to infiltrate a people wandering in the dark; to do so, they used superstition in a remarkable way.” In general, Hasidism offered a bright and inviting picture of the world, welcoming a vital life of joy and pleasure. “By doing away with melancholic piety, they won the hearts of the happy and energetic young.”44 Maimon believed that this revolutionary message was impaired, corrupted, and never implemented. He appears to have projected his personal disappointment from his encounter with Hasidism on the entire movement, which he presents as a failure. The emergence of Hasidism divided the Jews of Poland. “There was a feeling of unrest in the Jewish nation; opinions were divided.” However, according to his account, the struggle was decided when the Gaon of Vilna exerted “the authority of a famous rabbi whom the Jews greatly esteemed. . . . It was done so thoroughly that one now seldom finds traces of the society.”45 When he wrote those words in the 1790s, Maimon had only partial information, and he was entirely wrong in his reading of the fate of Hasidism. However, in including it as a revolutionary movement of religious awakening among some of the strongest modern tendencies of his time, he was quite correct. Although Maimon underestimated its social power, which increased at the end of the century, he was aware of the innovative and unsettling significance of the alternative leadership and the court in regard to the needs of the body and the soul and the preference for prayer over study of Talmud. After his visit to Międzyrzec, Maimon especially emphasized the expectation of empowerment of the self by means of the intimate encounter with the Hasidic leader.46

Note s 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life, Gutenberg.org, July 26, 2016, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52654/52654 -h/52654-h.htm. 2. Immanuel Kant, Correspondence, translated and edited by Arnulf Zweig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 88–89. 3. Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1767); Mendelssohn, Phaedon; Or, the Death of Socrates, trans. Charles Cullen (London: Unknown, [1767] 1789), Schiller Institute, accessed April 27, 2022, https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/transl/mend_phadn_cullen.html. 4. Mendelssohn, Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, 211–209; Mendelssohn, Phädon, or on the Immortality of the Soul, trans. Patricia Noble (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 152–154.

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5. See Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), ch. 3; Shmuel Feiner, Moses Mendelssohn, Sage of Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 6. Moses Mendelssohn, “Open Letter to Lavater,” in Moses Mendelssohn, Writings on Judaism, Christianity and the Bible, ed. Michah Gottlieb, trans. Curtis Bowman, Elias Sack, and Allan Arkush (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 6–15. 7. Mendelssohn, letter to Avigdor Levi (March 30, 1770), in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstaat: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 139. 8. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7, 29–47. 9. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 118–123. 10. Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), ch. 3. 11. David Franco Mendes, letter to Wessely (3 Shevat, 5528 [1768]), in Kinor david, MS ‘ets h.ayim, EH 47 B O3, 109; see also Jozeph Melkman, David Franco Mendes, A Hebrew Poet (Jerusalem: Massadah, 1951), ch. 8; Irene Zwiep, “An Echo of Lofty Mountains: David Franco Mendes, a European Intellectual,” Studia Rosenthaliana 35, no. 2 (2001): 285–296; David Friedrichsfeld, Zekher tsadiq (Amsterdam: Shlomo ben Avraham Proops, 1808); Tsevi Malakhi, “Pi hamedaber-yitsh.aq Hacohen belinfante: ledemuto shel meshorer, darshan, umo”l beamsterdam bameah hayod-h.et,” Meh.qarim ‘al toldot yahadut holand 1 (1975): 123–150; Shmuel Feiner, “Bein ‘ananei hasikhlut leor hamuskqalot: yehuda Horovitz maskil muqdam bameah hayod-h.et,” in Bema’agalei h.asidim: qovets maamarim lezekher professor mordekhai vilenski, ed. I. Etkes et al. (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2000), 111–160. 12. Franco Mendes, Gemul ‘atalia, melitsa hi kolelet divrei hayamim leyoash hamelekh (Amsterdam: Jansson, 1770). 13. Yehuda Horowitz, Sefer ‘amudei beit yehuda (Amsterdam: Yehudah Leib Susmann, 1766), fol. 2a-b. 14. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 113–114. 15. Horowitz, Sefer ‘amudei beit yehuda. 16. Avraham Ben Shlomo Hamburg, “’ale trufa,” Hameasef 2 (1785): 5–15. See also David B. Ruderman, “Some Jewish Responses to Smallpox Prevention in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A New Perspective on the Modernization of European Jewry,” Aleph 2 (2002): 111–144. 17. Hamburg, “’ale trufa.” 18. Mordecai Gumpel Schnaber Levison, Maamar hatora vehah.okhma, vol. 1 (London: Moshe Print, 1771), 1–10. See also David Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), ch. 12; Hans Joachim Schoeps, Studien zur unbekannten .

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Religions und Geistesgeschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967), 216–227; Moshe Pelli, The Age of Haskalah: Studies in Hebrew Literature of the Enlightenment in Germany (Leiden: Brill, 1979), ch. 7. 19. Levison, Maamar hatora vehah.okhma, 9; Horowitz, Sefer ‘amudei beit yehuda, fols. 15–17. 20. See Elisheva Carlebach, “Fallen Women and Fatherless Children: Jewish Domestic Servants in Eighteenth Century Altona,” Jewish History 24 (2010): 295–308. 21. Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 111–112. 22. Taqanot presburg mishnat 5528, in Yitshak Weisz, Sefer avnei beit hayotser, (Paks, 1900), fols. 40–42. 23. See Yosef Kaplan, “The Threat of Eros in Eighteenth-Century Sephardi Amsterdam,” in An Alternative Path to Modernity, The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 280–300. 24. Yeh.ezkel Landau, Noda’ beyehuda, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Unknown, 1992), Orah. h.ayim, question 35, and see Robert Liberles, The Jews Welcome Coffee: Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), 68–69; Kahana, Mehanoda’ beyehuda lah.atam sofer, 61–71. 25. See E. F. Klein, “Der Jude Daniel Moses, auch Dales genannt,” Annalen der Gesetzgebung und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit 15 (1797): 96–141. 26. Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), 155–157. And see Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 196–198; David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 260–265; Stephan Massil, “Naphtali Hart Myers (1711–1788): New Yorker and Londoner,” Jewish Historical Studies 43 (2011): 97–124. 27. On the robbery in Chelsea, see The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics and Literature for the Year 1771 (London: Unknown, 1772), 210–215; Jerry White, London in the 18th Century, A Great and Monstrous Thing (London; Vintage Books, 2012), 150; Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, 198–200. 28. See Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, 200–202; White, London in the 18th Century, 151. 29. Shim’on Copenhagen (Aharon Shim’on Ben Ya’aqov), Sefer or hayashar (Amsterdam: Jansson, 1769), fols. 1–2, 29a-b. 30. Ibid., fols. 205; Yisrael Lifschitz, Sefer or yisrael, Kleve 5530 (1770), fol. 5. And see Mordecai Halevi Horowitz, Rabanei frankfurt (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1972), 124–130; Shlomo Tal, “Haget mikleve,” Sinai 24 (1949): 152–167, 214–230.

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31. Letter from Rabbi Tevely Hess from Mannheim and the rabbinical court of the community of Frankfurt, 4 Tishrei 5527 (1766), and the letter by rabbis Abraham of Lisa and his rabbinical court from Frankfurt to Rabbi Yisrael Lifschitz of Kleve, 5 Tishrei 5527 (1766), from Copenhagen, Sefer or hayashar, fols. 3b-5a. 32. Copenhagen, Sefer or hayashar, fols. 23–24; Horowitz, Rabanei frankfurt, 326–327; Tal, “Haget mikleve,” 163–167. 33. Lifschitz, Sefer or leyisrael, fols. 2–3, 16; Copenhagen, Sefer or hayashar; the letter by Ya’aqov Gunzhausen from Bonn to the great rabbis of the generation (n.d.), in Copenhagen, op. cit., fol. 31a-32b. 34. Jacob Emden to Yisrael Lifschitz, the New Moon of Adar, 5527 (1767), in Copenhagen, op. cit., fol. 34a. 35. See Yisrael Klausner, Vilna betequfat hagaon: hamilh.ama haruh.anit vehah. evratit beqehilat vilna betequfat hagra (Jerusalem: Sinai, 1942), 1–82; Klausner, Vilna yerushalayim delita, dorot rishonim 1495–1881 (Tel Aviv: Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, 1988), 88–93. 36. See Yehoshua Mondshine, “’Ir Vilna – qirya neemana?” Kerem H.abad 4, no. 1 (1992): 162–188. 37. Shmuel Ben Eli’ezer of Kalvarija, Sefer darkhei no’am (Königsberg: Johann Friedrich Drost, 1764), fols. 19–28. On him see Mendel Piekarz, Biyemi tsemih. at hah.asidut: megamot ra’yoniot besifrei drush umusar (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1978), 89–90, 153–163. For a critique of the faulty functioning of the rabbinical leadership and its meaning for the processes of modernization, see Adam Teller, “Tradition and Crisis? Eighteenth-Century Critiques of the PolishLithuanian Rabbinate,” Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 3 (2011): 1–39. 38. Mordecai Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem bashanim 5532–5575 (1772–1815) (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 235–236. 39. See Ada Rapaport-Albert, “Hatenua’ hah.asidit ah.arei shnat 1772: Retsef mivni utemura,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Socological Aspects of Hasidism, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 210– 272 (esp. 228–235); Shimon Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), chs. 2 and 3; David Biale et al., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 103–155. 40. Avraham Ya’ari, “Masa’ot r. simh.a ben r. yehoshua’ mizalozitz,” in Masa’ot erets yisrael (Tel Aviv: Massadah, 1996), 383–423. See also Immanuel Etkes, Ba’al hashem: habesht – magia, mistiqa, hanhaga (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2000), 201–204. 41. Yisrael Halperin, “Yah.aso shel r. aharon hagadol mikarlin klapei mishtar haqehilot,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Socological Aspects of Hasidism, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 153–159.

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42. Solomon Maimon, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation, trans. Oaul Reitter, ed. Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 93–96. See also Immanuel Etkes, “Ha’h.atser’ hah.asidit beshlaveiha harishonim,” in H.ut shel h.en, ed. Bartal et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2013), 227–246 (esp. 228–236); David Assaf, “Torot hamagid dov ber mimeserich bezikhronot shlomo maimon,” Zion 71 (2006): 99–101. 43. Maimon, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 97. See David Assaf, “‘Bat? Dino lehalqaa!’: Heh.asid keadam meseh.eq,” in Yashan mipnei h.adash: meh. qarim betoldot yehudei mizrah. eiropa uvetarbutam, shai le’imanuel etqes, vol. 1, ed. David Assaf and Ada Rapaport-Albert (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2009), 121–150. 44. Maimon, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 100, 106–107. 45. Ibid., 93, 100. 46. Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut, 86; Gershon David Hundert, Jews in PolandLithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 208–210. On the modernity of Hasidism, see Moshe Rosman, “Hasidism as a Modern Phenomenon: The Paradox of Modernization without Secularization,” in Early Modern Culture and Haskalah: Reconsidering the Borderlines of Modern Jewish History, Simon-Dubnow-Institut Jahrbuch-Yearbook, vol. 6, ed. Shmuel Feiner and David Ruderman (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 215–224; Biale et al., Hasidism: A New History, 1–11.

ten

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1772 A Year That Challenged the Old Order

When Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, the founder of the Habad Hasidic dynasty, described the dramatic historical events that, in his opinion, made it possible for Hasidism to gain important achievements in competition with the established rabbinical elite, he pointed out 1772 as a highly significant milestone. Surprisingly, although he was a prominent leader of the Hasidism of White Russia and he set out a spiritual path and consolidated a sect devoted to achieving spiritual goals, the conceptual apparatus he used for his historical interpretation was also sensitive to the political upheavals in Eastern Europe, and he had internalized the critical ethos and revolution of his day. The “Kingdom of the Rabbis” had fallen. Katherine the Great had taken over parts of Poland and had brought in the spirit of liberty. Hasidism proposed a deep, open, and democratic religious alternative. The Old Order was put to the test on various fronts in 1772. In Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Professor Oluf Tychsen demanded the urgent intervention of the authorities in the Jews’ burial customs, because they contradicted science and humanity, provoking a confrontation between the community and the state as well as a tense internal discussion of the fitness of the Jewish religion to the new age. A few weeks afterward, teacher Josef Levine asked the Prussian authorities to intervene in Jewish education, which he regarded as faulty and damaging to the economy of the state, and he proposed a comprehensive reform. At the same time, Israel Ben Issachar Ber, a learned Jew apparently from Central or Eastern Europe, wrote a fierce satire about the religious permissiveness of Amsterdam. In his manuscript, ‘Olam h.adash (A New World), he left a historical document that reflects the strength of the increasing fears of secularization. This document paints a desperate and gloomy picture and identifies an array of forces that erode the basic values of

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Jewish society and the norms and practices of the religion. But at the same time, it offers a direct description of a spontaneous social movement of liberation, independence, and the addiction of men and women to the new styles of dress and entertainment of a European metropolis. In the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century, 1772 was a crossroads where several of the tensions of the earlier decades met and from which paths were blazed for existence in a new world, under increasing pressure from the centralized state, and in an atmosphere of competition and inner confrontation that constantly grew stronger.

“Th e E x agger ations a n d Li e s Th at Ou r Opponents Spr e a d aga inst Us” The leaders of the new Hasidism were the first to experience this directly. In the spring of 1772, apparently at the end of the week after Passover, the sentence of Issar, the head of the Hasidic group of Vilna, was carried out, according to the verdict of the lay leaders of the Kahal, the religious judges, and the rabbi of the community, Shmuel Ben Avigdor. He was imprisoned in the Schloss, the city prison, and on Friday he was transferred to incarceration in the Chamber of the Kahal. Close to the entry of the Sabbath, he was flogged with a whip, and writings that had been found in his possession were burned at the foot of the kune, the pillory in the gate of the synagogue. On that Sabbath, all the members of the community were summoned to prayer in the central synagogue, and during the morning prayers on the Sabbath, Issar, along with several of his comrades in the Hasidic band, climbed the steps to the Holy Ark and recited a confession, expressing remorse and repentance. Immediately afterward, the beadle read a writ of excommunication against the Hasidim before the congregation. The “true Hasid,” as the Vilna Gaon was called, was not present at the assembly that stipulated the punishment, but when he was told, he trembled in fury and reproved the “nobles” for punishing Issar lightly. “Had it been up to me,” said the Gaon, “I would have done to them what Elijah the Prophet did to the prophets of Ba’al.” This radical reference could not have been clearer: with their heresy and ecstatic practices, the Hasidim were challenging the accepted religion and were no less dangerous than the false prophets of antiquity, whose fate was decreed by the prophet of God (“Elijah took them down to the Kishon brook and slaughtered them” [1 Kings 18:40]). He suggested that at least the punishment should be more severe and that he should be placed in the stocks so that everyone attending the synagogue would see him in his humiliation and contempt. Fortunately for Issar, the leaders of the Kahal rejected the idea.1

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Twelve years after the death of the Ba’al Shem Tov and a few months before that of the maggid of Międzyrzec, the organized campaign for the absolute suppression of Hasidism began, to be remembered later as the beginning of the movement of Mitnagdim in Lithuania. With threats, excommunication, punishments, and accusations of religious heresy and subversion of communal authority, a concentrated effort was made to stifle the competition just as it was emerging. The documents remaining from the dispute of 1772 are laden with bellicose and bombastic rhetoric and leave no room for doubt. In the eyes of the furious Mitnagdim, the challenge of Hasidism was interpreted as no less than an existential danger. In almost all of them, the heroic figure who waged the war, who picked out the target, and who warned against distortions of the religion was none other than Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, the Vilna Gaon. The primary mission was to utterly deny legitimacy to the religious alternative proposed by the new Hasidism. News about the Hasidic circles, both in Lithuania and White Russia and not only in the Ukraine, had reached the Vilna Gaon, who became the unofficial but authoritative address regarding their fitness to be included in the congregation. In early 1772, Zalman of Lyadi and Menah.em Mendel of Vitebsk set out for Vilna to speak with the Gaon and allay his apprehensions. Zalman was a young man of twenty-five who believed that a personal conversation could mollify the rabbi and “make peace in Israel.” However, the Gaon refused to receive them (“he closed the door before us twice”), he rejected pressure from “the great men of the city” to moderate his rigid position, and he even fled from his home and waited in the suburbs until the two men left Vilna. Making another effort, they went to Shklow, where the first slanderous rumors against Hasidism originated, and they agreed to a “dispute”—in fact, an interrogation—but there, too, they failed. Immanuel Etkes conjectures that they might even have fallen victim to violence there. For decades afterward, the wound remained painful and bleeding. According to Zalman, as representatives of the new movement of religious awakening, the two men made a true effort to achieve peace and reach an understanding, but the Mitnagdim acted with anger and uncompromising fanaticism. The trip to Vilna, which was cut short at the locked house of the Vilna Gaon, was frustrating, and the visit to Shklov was disappointing and weakened them, since they had entered a trap with their eyes open: “They did something to us, which should not be done, and changed their arguments and the promises they had made at first, that they would do nothing to us.”2 In the spring of 1772, an open confrontation broke out in Vilna, and the representatives of Hasidism were crushed. The counternarrative left no room for compromise or dialogue. News reached the Gaon from Shklov about Kabbalistic

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teachings, in which he found “heresy and” and suspicions similar to those that had earlier aroused the persecutors of Luzzatto, to whom the Hasidim attributed direct divine inspiration (“the revelation of Elijah”). Along with these came testimony that was horrifying to him about the wild behavior of ecstatic Hasidism lead by Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk (1741–1810)—including that their worship involved “standing with their feet upside down,” homosexual acts, and contempt for Torah scholars. The Gaon’s intimates reported words spoken by the maggid H.ayim, a leader of the Hasidic cell in Vilna, on the intermediate days of Passover: “The teacher H.ayim responded about the Gaon, may his light shine, that he was a lie and his Torah was a lie and his faith was a lie.” The Gaon announced to the congregation decisively that from then on, total war must be waged: “It is a commandment to repel them and to pursue them and to make them decrease and to expel them from the land.” The Hasidic prayer group in Vilna (“the Karliner’s minyan”) was dispersed, and the maggid H.ayim was discharged, reprimanded, ostracized, and required to ask the Gaon’s forgiveness and leave the community. Issar, the leader of the group, was punished as mentioned above, and the Hasidic manuscripts in his possession were burned. Within a few days, letters and proclamations were issued to warn against the danger and to enlist broad support. A letter to Brisk described the Hasidim as hypocritical, fraudulent, and frivolous Kabbalists who successfully incited young scholars to follow their path. Their leaders pretended to be “admirable men,” their prayer was “in madness,” they relegated Torah study to the side, and it was no wonder that they held Torah scholars in contempt. Those in Vilna had sent away “the wicked family,” but because “the scourge has already spread in every land and city,” the urgent task was to make sure that “they will move away from every place, that they will not receive any position, and that they will never take over hearts.” An “epistle of zeal,” even more vehement, was sent to the community of Brody. It accused the Hasidic prayer group of Vilna of the sin, because of which infants died in an epidemic, and they hinted at “the great abomination done among the Jews” in Hasidic circles. It presented the determination of the Gaon to place the full weight of his authority behind persecution of the sect. The epistle claimed that Hasidism offered a new religious experience that demolished the religion with frivolity (“they always laugh boisterously and frolic with joy of wantonness”), and mainly it complained angrily about their separation from the community: “We have imposed a great excommunication in all the synagogues,” proclaimed the leaders of Vilna, “that they must not see fit or act anymore, perish the thought, to build an altar for themselves and withdraw from the community.”3

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The response in Brody was particularly emotional and accompanied by a feeling of panic. The news from Vilna about a secret Kabbalistic society that behaved ecstatically aroused the fresh memory of the struggle against the Frankists. It appeared that “the fire that had broken out a few years ago had not been extinguished,” wrote the community scribe, Arieh Leib Ben Mordecai, in the margins of the epistle. “Wicked bands still dance among us.” On 20 Sivan (June 21, 1772), a proclamation of excommunication against the Hasidim was issued at the fair in Brody. Once again, wanton “sects and bands” had arisen that were abandoning the community, throwing off the yoke of Torah, innovating customs, praying from the prayer book of the ARI (the Kabbalist Isaac Luria) rather than the customary Ashkenazi prayer book, and insisting on special knives for slaughter. Special Kabbalistic customs were reserved for select individuals alone, and some of the men in the Kloiz (study house) of Brody, whose members signed the excommunication, adopted them. However, it would not have occurred to them that this exclusive esoteric framework, restricted to “remnants to whom the Lord calls,” would break out and become known to all. Without a doubt, the proclamation stated, were it not that the leadership of the Council of Four Lands had been abolished less than a decade ago, the Hasidim would be persecuted and their shame would be publicized, but now this task to make certain that the religion was not undermined and that no split should develop was incumbent upon the central community whose authority came from the concentration of Torah scholars who dwelled in it. The proclamations of excommunication and the letters overflowed with accusations that revealed the Gaon’s and community leadership’s apprehensions. Fear of the return of Sabbateanism in a new, sophisticated guise was palpable. The Gaon and the Kabbalists of the Kloiz of Brody defended the boundaries of pietism against the threat of the New Hasidism. H.aim Hillel Ben Sasson, who drew the spiritual and psychological portrait of the Vilna Gaon, emphasized “the revulsion and dread aroused in the Gaon’s heart by Hasidic propaganda,” as well as his disgust in response to the stories about the greatness of the zaddiks. Fear of contempt for Torah scholars and erosion of the authority of the rabbinical elite ultimately motivated the opposition to Hasidism. Their appearance as “new things that recently arrived” aroused apprehension because of the very pretention of innovation, and it was rejected as illegitimate. As occurred with other movements that arose in the eighteenth century and proposed a new vision, the suspicious questions immediately arose: What is the source of authority for this innovation? Is it not subversion of the stable and familiar order, which is to be defended ardently?4 Arie Leib Ben Mordecai published a book with the bellicose title of Zemir ‘aritsim veh.aravot tsurim (The Pruning Hook of Tyrants and Swords of Flint) in

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Oleksinets, near Brody. The writers he gathered together bolstered the first wave of polemics against Hasidism. This declaration of war did frighten the Hasidic leaders, and, not surprisingly, an effort was made to obtain the pamphlets, which were even burned in some places.5 The parties in the confrontation did not seem to be equal in strength. The Hasidic circles appeared to be weak and vulnerable, and their voice was barely heard in response to the serious accusations they received. A central source, and almost the only one, about events in the opposite camp was Shneur Zalman. In various epistles years later, he recalled the formative moments of 1772 from his point of view. The excommunication in Brody and the pamphlets that were circulated had a severe effect: “In that summer they wrote the pamphlet, Zemir ‘aritsim, and it was a great tribulation for all the righteous men of Volhynia.” They cried out for instruction and gathered for an emergency meeting with the maggid of Międzyrzec, who was then living in Równe, in the western Ukraine. According to Shneur Zalman, understanding emerged there that the radical Hasidism of Avraham of Kalisk was responsible for the ferocity of the opposition, and the maggid himself reprimanded him and “spoke harshly to him about his bad conduct,” because his Hasidim used to “joke about scholars and mock them . . . and also to turn over with their heads down and their feet up [kolyen zikh] in the streets of Kalisk.” The maggid also rejected the proposal to fight back and distribute sharp replies in pamphlets of his own. He ordered restraint. This apparently derived from almost paralyzing respect for the Gaon of Vilna, which prevented an organized Hasidic response. Zalman tried to believe that the Gaon might have been misled, and the testimony he depended on was certainly exaggerated and biased. However, the moment that the Gaon determined that Hasidism was the enemy, there was no longer any way to shatter that determination. The slight support they received from the outside proved to be negligible, not a counterinfluence. Rabbi Shmuel Shmelke (1726–1778), the rabbi of Nikolsburg, who was among the pilgrims to the court of the maggid of Międzyrzec, asked the community of Brody, which had issued the excommunication, how they had let themselves be misled by gossip and incitement from Vilna. Their job was to lower the flames, he told them, not to exacerbate the dispute with the Hasidism, “who devote their souls to worship of the heart.” Besides, how did the men of Vilna have the temerity to rule so decisively and condemn “so many totally God-fearing men”?6 The policy of restraint proved itself. The Hasidim were not defeated; they did not even vanish in Vilna, where they were ostensibly expelled from, and their ranks even expanded: “After this the men of our heart increased by the thousands and tens of thousands, in every country, when they saw the exaggerations

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and lies that our opponents spread against us, in powerfully shouting to the whole world about us with a great noise and sounding of trumpets.” In fact it appears that they achieved the opposite of the effect they hoped for: “And thereby they arouse the slumbering in the vanities of the time to waken from their sleep and to see light and to differentiate truth from falsehood, which has no leg to stand on.”7 Though this was not his intention, Shneur Zalman explained how the fierce attack of the Mitnagdim began to consolidate Hasidism into a movement with its own identity. The maggid of Międzyrzec died on December 5, 1772, a short time after the assembly in Równe. Henceforth, in their own eyes and those of their opponents, the Hasidic prayer groups that banded together, the special customs, the ecstatic prayer, and the zaddikim around whom the believers gathered became a single, well-defined phenomenon. In a document preserved in the dossier of Shneur Zalman of Lyadi’s investigation in Saint Petersburg on suspicion of political subversion, we can read his version of what seemed like no less than the Hasidic revolution. In his affidavit to the Russian authorities, he did not conceal his aspiration, in the 1760s and 1770s, to overthrow “the government of the rabbis” and to obtain religious freedom that would open up a space for competition among various alternatives, especially the independent existence of Hasidic prayer groups. With political awareness, Shneur Zalman pointed to what he saw as the exact correspondence between processes in international relations and deep tendencies for change in the community and in religion. As long as Poland was independent and ruled by the aristocracy, this made possible the deepening of the religious crisis: “Rabbis served among us who were not honest, and they bought the salary of the rabbinate from the governor of the city for a certain sum in every single city, and in the whole kingdom of Poland, because the king turned a blind eye, and for bribes the ministers issued writs, which are called Concession, to the rabbi in every city, to rule over all the Jews in his city, in every matter touching upon their religion.” The corruption was great, the tyranny of the rabbis was intolerable, and the level of religiosity declined deeply, and one of the expressions of this was a blow to the quality of prayer. Only select individuals known as Hasidim preserved the flame. Then the Russians penetrated Poland, and under the leadership of Katherine, they caused a dramatic upheaval. Under the rule of Stanislaw Poniatowski, reigning under the aegis of Russia, the corrupt rabbinate began to be weakened, and after 1772, in Zalman’s opinion, the purchase of rabbinical posts was forbidden: “Until the grace of God was upon us, and he aroused the heart of her highness, the empress of Russia, to rule and expand over the entire land of Poland, and before the last king was crowned there, the aforementioned government of the rabbis began to decline little by little, until

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the land of Poland was partitioned and the aforementioned government of the rabbis fell entirely.”8 This declaration was of course intended to mollify the Russian regime and to praise its policy so as to clear Shneur Zalman of suspicion and attain his liberation, but it also implied the aspiration of the Hasidic leader to rid himself once and for all of the persecution of the Mitnagdim. The Partition of Poland, because of which the Jewish communities fell into Russian hands, freed the Jewish masses, in his opinion, from fear of the rabbis and completed their downfall. The collapse of the Polish kingdom was parallel, according to this historical picture, to the defeat of the rabbinate. Now, under the regime of Katherine the Great, Hasidism, too, could thrive under new circumstances of religious freedom and pluralism: “And then the whole nation became free and liberated in our state of Russia, and there is permission and ability for everyone, whoever wants to in our country, to hold prayer as he wishes, whether as an individual or with others in the House of Study or another place, and no one protests in our country.” Hasidism was not a new sect but a new, special style of prayer that stressed intention in the worship of God. In words that throbbed with the age of revolutions, the first leader of Habad Hasidism emphasized that one should no longer expect uniformity, because “It is known in all the religions in the world, that this is impossible, that all the members of a religion would be equal in caution for observing the religion in entirety.” Henceforth it can be assumed that free competition would develop, and certainly it was wrong to oppress Hasidism, since “it is truly this way with us, that now those who wish to pray with intention have slightly increased.”9

“H er Highne ss th e E m pr e ss’s Lov e of M a nk in d” From the Jewish point of view, which endowed the historical change of the first Partition of Poland with significance, and also with regard to the polemics against Hasidism, 1772 was, in Simon Dubnow’s opinion, “a remarkable year in Jewish history.” Two fissures opened up at the same time. In parallel with the “religious split” that was expressed “in the thundering excommunications against the Hasidim in the major communities of Lithuania and Galicia,” the process of the disintegration of Polish Jewry began: “Two Jewish groups split apart, the one in the north [Russia] and the one in the south [Austria], while the religious dispute began to tear apart the center of the people from within into two camps.”10 Although one might express reservations about this sweeping generalization and point to the limited extent of these splits, Dubnow did not overly exaggerate. Most of the Jews of Poland still remained within the borders

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of an independent country. Although Hasidism was still limited in extent, few people identified as either Hasidim or Mitnagdim, and, aside from the rhetoric of the authors of the excommunications, it did not appear that a schism was in the offing, nevertheless, an earth tremor was felt. After the Russian soldiers overcame the Bar Confederation and conquered the fortress of Częstochowa, Jacob Frank was released from imprisonment, and he proclaimed to his followers that the Partition of Poland was an expression of a schism in Christianity and in the history of the kingdoms, advancing the messianic process. With enthusiasm and a sense of innovation and momentum for the Frankist movement before he left Poland for the Habsburg Empire in early 1773, several of Frank’s close followers were sent to some of the larger communities, including Brody and Lwow, which had been annexed to Austria, “to announce to all those who fear God, so that they should know, that the time will come, when all the Jews will be forced into apostasy.”11 However, far beyond this messianic consciousness, the challenges posed by the Partition of Poland among three centralized kingdoms presented entirely new challenges. Dov Ber Birkental, an eyewitness who found himself in Bolechów under Austrian rule, was among those who tried to find the meaning of these geopolitical shifts. As we have already seen, he was pleased to see Poland weakened and disintegrating, and he pointed to a connection of sin and retribution between the abolition of the supra-communal organizations in 1764 and the tumult in Poland and the rebellion of the Bar Confederation. From then on, it was on a slippery slope. The verse from Ezekiel (25:14) provided a theological explanation of the turning point of 1772. After several years of anarchy and civil war, “the entire country was divided in the year 5532, and all the honor was removed from Poland, and their aforementioned king [Poniatowski], and the prophecy was fulfilled, ‘And I will lay my vengeance upon Edom,’ they are the people of Poland and the Christians, who are called Edom, ‘by the hand of my people Israel,’ that is to say, what they did to the Jews is done to them.” This interpretation bore a double and contradictory message, which reflected Birkental’s dual outlook as a Jew and a Pole. On the one hand, Poland had been punished, measure for measure (“so shall all our enemies the informers be destroyed”), and on the other hand, the Poles, who had become a nation of slaves, could feel on their own flesh and perhaps identify with the suffering of Jewish exile and understand the mortal blow to their national pride.12 The first Partition of Poland was received in Europe as a great sensation. The people of the time spoke in amazement about how a weak independent state had become a “royal cake,” from which its three neighbors, without provocation or war, took huge bites, seizing up to a third of its territory, without any other

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state intervening. The French and English regarded the Partition as a grave act, but they took no steps to change the new situation, which was put in place in the summer of 1772. David Hume called the action barbaric. Horace Walpole called those responsible the most shameless bands of thieves that ever existed, and in the arbitrary conquest of Poland, he found proof of the existence of Satan. For his part, Diderot called the Partition an insult to the human race.13 Ironically, the initiators and perpetrators of the Partition shared in the feeling that something unworthy had been done, and they went out of their way to present the Partition of Poland as a necessary solution that had virtually forced itself on them. In a letter to Voltaire, Friedrich II explained that he knew that almost all of Europe believed that the Partition of Poland was the outcome of a political plot for which he was responsible. However, he was trying with all of his might to prevent a general war, which was on the verge of breaking out, and Partition was the last resort.14 The apologetic narrative of the leaders of Prussia, Austria, and Russia emphasized repeatedly that what appeared to be a violent and destructive act was in fact a successful effort to preserve the balance of power in Europe and to restore order in Poland, which was falling apart. Joseph II, the young emperor who wished to be famous and make his mark on Europe even during the years when he still shared rule with his mother, did not regret the part played by Austria in the Partition, but he was afraid his name would be besmirched. According to the British ambassador, he admitted that the Partition of Poland was shameful. Along with confidence that what the rulers of Austria, including himself, had done was absolutely necessary, he was also ashamed and had twinges of conscience; he was afraid that the Polish affair would give the world a false impression of his character and that he would be seen as an immoral and unprincipled man, contrary to his aspiration to be a truly decent man, both in private and public life. However, even though Joseph II feared what would be thought of him, he was convinced that Austria’s participation in the Partition was vital, and he believed, like the king of Prussia, that it was preferable to war.15 In contrast, Maria Theresa did not conceal her discontent both while the plan had only begun to take shape and after it was enacted. Six years later, in a letter to her daughter, Queen Marie Antoinette (in Paris), she wrote that the regrettable seizure of Galicia (from Poland) had incurred enormous expenses for her, worries, and loss of faith everywhere, the result of hasty decisions.16 To her son Joseph, she announced with regret that she would always see that the Polish territory had been purchased at too high a price, because it had been acquired at the expense of the kingdom’s honor, reputation, trust, and virtue. Friedrich II made a sarcastic comment about Maria Theresa’s hypocritical expression of the

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tension between shame and cruel necessity: She wept, but she took her piece of Polish territory.17 A naval battle that took place in July 1770 in the straits of the Turkish port city of Chesma, in Asia Minor, set in motion another dramatic change in the political map of Europe. The decisive Russian victory over the Ottoman fleet was one of the peaks in the Russo-Turkish war. The appearance of Russian warships in the Mediterranean was so surprising and changed the balance of power to such an extent that it was seen as “one of the most splendid events of the eighteenth century”. Katherine was euphoric and shared her feelings with Voltaire. Hitherto she had thought that peace was the height of happiness, but now she found that war also had some beautiful moments.18 This was the moment when Austria and Prussia began to fear the increased power of Russia versus Turkey and Poland; war between Austria and Russia seemed inevitable. During the following two years, ministers and diplomats discussed ways of resolving the crisis and restoring the balance of power. In the three courts of Saint Petersburg, Potsdam, and Vienna, no one desired war, but opinions regarding the desired solution were divided. Friedrich, who was the most worried of all, sent his brother, Prince Heinrich, to Russia, and he was apparently the first to propose the idea of partitioning Poland as a solution to save Europe from a bloody conflict. In February 1772, the outlines of the conquest were decided upon, and on August 5, 1772, the First Partition of Poland was signed in Saint Petersburg. The armies of Austria and Prussia had not delayed, and the invasion had already begun in early spring. The conquered areas were placed under the control of generals and governors. In a ceremony held in Lwow on October 4, 1772, the new Austrian governor, Count Johann von Pergen, proclaimed that Galicia was included in the historical territory of Hungary. In the First Partition, Poland lost about a third of its territory and about a third—4,500,000—of its population. The lion’s share went to Austria in the southeastern region, which was called Galicia (with 2,650,000 residents), and others (580,000) were ruled by Prussia. Russia received the districts of Plotsk, Vitebsk, and Mogilev, with 1,300,000 residents.19 With great political cynicism, the Partition was forced on the Polish king and the Sejm with the threat that the three powers would conquer the entire country and destroy the capital, Warsaw, to confirm the new situation. Without a real army after the loss of profitable resources such as the salt mines, which were taken by Austria, with the presence of a foreign power in the capital city, and after failed appeals for assistance from the other rulers of Europe, Poniatowski was helpless. Resistance to the Partition was presented as a danger to what remained of Poland. In September 1773, the institutions of the independent Polish government, in a series of resolutions,

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ratified the conquest of parts of their country in a series of bilateral treaties, agreed upon in effect by the conquered themselves.20 In the chronicle of Abraham Trebitsch, the Partition is described as a wonder in the history of international relations, as it was a conquest without military resistance: “In the year 5533, 1772 according to their reckoning, three mighty kings took counsel, the empress of Russia, that is Katherine, and the emperor Joseph II in the lifetime of his mother Theresa, and the king of Prussia, that is Friedrich II, and they took a large part of the country of Poland without the sight of sword and shield.” Trebitsch, who lived in Moravia, commented that the Austrian takeover of Galicia was justified in terms of historical ownership, “for in past years it belonged to the state of Hungary,” and it had only been conquered by Poland in the fourteenth century.21 The meeting of “the three giants,” as he called them, did not really take place, but the general picture regarding the Partition and those involved in it was quite accurate. Although the chronicle was addressed to the Jews, it did not discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Partition of Poland for the fate of the Jewish communities in the conquered areas. More than a quarter of a million Jews—more than 20 percent of the Jews in the world and almost a third of those in Poland—found themselves with a new political identity in 1772. The change in the borders shifted them from Polish rule, which allowed them extensive autonomy, even after the abolition of the supra-communal councils, to the rule of centralized states, which practiced supervision, inspection, and reform. Until then, their fate had mainly been determined by the Polish magnates, clergy, and local officials and by decisions that were made in Warsaw. Henceforth the policy makers were in the capital cities of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and the policy was implemented by their representatives in the districts of the new territories: the governors, officials, and army officers. About two hundred thousand Jews lived in Galicia, including the community of Brody, which had issued the severe excommunication against the Hasidism just a month and a half before the regime change. Some Hasidic groups that were under attack in White Russia, including Shneur Zalman’s circle in Łoźna, went over to the Russian Empire, whereas Vilna, in Lithuania, which had precipitated the dispute, remained in independent Poland. For decades Russia’s rulers had made every effort to prevent Jews from settling there, but now they had taken in about forty-five thousand Jews, the kernel of modern Russian Jewry. Prussia, which, for about a century of new Jewish settlement, had been concerned with restricting their demographic increase and mainly preserving the elite who contributed to the economy, found about twenty thousand additional Jews in its new territories.22

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It appeared to the Prussian officials who arrived to administer the new district of Netze that Jews were everywhere. In places such as Platow (formerly Złotów) or Inowrocław, about half the population was indeed Jewish. With a certain sense of panic and surprise from those who regarded them only as merchants, reports were sent to Berlin that said things like, “With all the Jews here it’s too crazy for me. I want a doctor, a Jew comes, a fisherman, a Jew comes, a butcher, a baker—they’re also Jews. All the tradesmen in the world are Jews.”23 The principles of Friedrich II’s policy toward the Jewish minority had been stated about a quarter of a century earlier, as noted, in the General Privilege. In his political testament of 1768, the king’s declaration expressed revulsion and suspicion as well as the sharp distinction between those who are useful to the state economy and those who are damaging. The Prussians must be wary of the damage that Jewish commerce can do, as it is based on deceit, fraud, and smuggling. Bureaucrats on every level were required to employ the most stringent and effective means of supervision possible.24 The exploitation of wealthy Jews to develop the mercantile economy led, for example, to the Porcelain Law (March 21, 1769), which required the protected Jews to purchase vessels such as dining and coffee services, vases, and statuettes from the factory that had just been established in Berlin, although some of them were of poor quality and the prices were exorbitant. In every sense, this was a new tax payable at the marriage of the first and second sons, upon renewal of the writ of protection, or on the sale of a house, but it was presented as support for industry, and it was accompanied by the expectation that the “Jewish porcelain” would be sold beyond the borders of Prussia.25 The instructions that Friedrich II sent to the officers and managers of the conquered areas of Poland were consistent with this policy. They were to make certain that within the new borders of Prussia, only families with means would remain, and merchants involved in commerce with Poland would be situated along the Netze river. The leasing of liquor distilleries was to be abolished, and beggars and the poor (the requisite assets were first set at one thousand thalers and later reduced to one hundred) would be deported to independent Poland. When it became evident that immediate mass deportation would harm trade and interfere with the payment of heavy debts to the churches and monasteries, this policy was moderated and restricted to beggars. However, in the following years, about seven thousand Jews were deported, more than a third of the population that had been annexed to Prussia.26 The transition to Austrian rule required the Jewish communities in Galicia to immediately transfer their loyalty to the new rulers in Vienna. About a year after the conquest, on December 29, 1773, the large and central community of

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Brody held a series of formal ceremonies, all of which expressed the patriotism demanded of the new subjects of the Habsburgs. The lay leaders swore allegiance to Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the synagogue, opposite the Holy Ark. The intercessor, physician Abraham Uziel, read a speech in praise of Austria to a delegation of the district governor and military officers, and the cantor and chorus sang a prayer for the welfare of the kingdom. A stage and a victory arch were built in the synagogue courtyard, and, by torchlight, a carnivalesque mass celebration was held. Those assembled shouted enthusiastically, “Long live the queen and the emperor.” The Austrian conquest also caused an immediate crisis in Brody, which for years had served as a commercial crossroads between Eastern Europe and Western and Southern Europe. In the spring, Russian military forces were still passing through, demanding substantial payments, and when the Austrians established themselves there and the border with Poland was created—with customs stations—the channels of trade were severed. Mercantile considerations prevailed in the end, and, thanks to many concessions, the Jewish merchants of the city flourished; by the end of the century, the Jewish population reached 16,000, accounting for about 85 percent of the residents.27 Concern about the large number of Jews in Galicia perturbed the decision makers in Austria, just as the presence of the Jewish population was seen as a problem in the area of Prussian conquest. Austria was determined to effect reforms that would, as quickly as possible, institute patterns appropriate for a centralized state that worked efficiently and produced maximal benefit from its subjects in the new regions that had been Polish.28 Even Maria Theresa, the queen who so despised the Jews and who had, as noted in the first volume, insisted on expelling the Jews of Prague, made an exception for Jews who contributed to the strength of the state. The community of the Italian port city of Trieste on the Adriatic were Jews of that kind. Between four and eight hundred Jews lived in that free commercial city under Austrian rule. In the year preceding the Partition of Poland, they had received extensive rights. Lois Dubin pointed out that the Habsburg Empire, which was in favor of religious uniformity and regarded the Jews as a plague, made an exception for Trieste in the clear interest of the centralized state. In 1771, Maria Theresa signed regulations that confirmed the rights of the Jews there to engage freely in commerce and manufacturing, freed them of special taxes, and granted them religious autonomy. In anticipation of the language of enlightened absolutism that would characterize Joseph II, this was a policy of toleration both for the Jews as subjects of the state and for the combined body of the members of the community, referred to as the “Jewish nation,” which was granted toleration in the free city of Trieste.29

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This inclusive and encouraging policy for a few hundred Jews in Trieste was exceptional. In contrast, both the empress and her son regarded the two hundred thousand Jews who had been annexed to the state mainly as a problem created by a rapidly growing population, many of whose members were not productive and were even damaging to the burghers and peasants. In the summer of 1772, Joseph II already suggested to his mother that she should exclude the Jews of Galicia from the businesses of leasing taverns, post offices, breweries, and liquor distilleries. The governors of the city of Lwow ordered the removal of Jews from shops they had rented in Christian-owned buildings. In December, instructions were issued in Vienna to take a census of the Jews of Galicia so that the authorities could supervise the new population effectively and also identify aliens who had infiltrated. The heads of the communities and the rabbis were required to supply, among other things, detailed information about the financial situation and structure of the leadership, as well as lists of all the heads of households, including their age and occupation. About half a year after the annexation of Galicia, an order of expulsion was published: all the Jewish beggars were to be removed, and the heads of the synagogues were to guarantee, with their property and, in some circumstances, their bodies, the execution of the order in all its details. At the same time, the Austrian regime sought to restrict the number of Jews by making marriage contingent on approval by the authorities. The ostensible purpose of the reform was to reduce the extent of child marriages, as it was claimed that the many precocious marriages and the resulting vast increase in the size of families was one of the reasons for the Jews’ economic plight, which led to poverty and beggary. The intervention of the state in the private lives of thousands of Jewish subjects was deep. The draconian decree stated in the most definite terms that henceforth marriage was a concern of the state. It was most strictly forbidden, under penalty of confiscation of property, and, according to circumstances, corporal punishment, to contract a marriage in the country or beyond its borders without a license from the government and without payment of a duty. The encounter with hostile officials, the new burden of taxes, and the fear of expulsion among the poor strata of society gave rise to strategies for circumventing the state with its centralized supervision and requirements: avoidance, concealment, refraining from reporting about beggars, bribing officials to turn a blind eye, and marrying in secret to avoid obtaining a license, the payment of the tax, and the restrictions of age.30 The Jews’ first encounter with the authorities of the Russian occupation appeared to be much more promising. Katherine II issued instructions to the new district officials in White Russia to convince the local population that

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the government was not planning to infringe upon their rights or religious freedom.31 Although Katherine had been apprehensive about allowing even a few Jews into her country at the start of her reign, during the 1770s and 1780s, she introduced a policy that, for example, guaranteed equal rights in municipal affairs. Richard Pipes went even farther and claimed that Katherine’s attitude toward the Jews partook of the Enlightenment and heralded emancipation. In his opinion, she was the first ruler in Europe to give the Jews rights equal to those of her Christian subjects. Therefore, in these circumstances, the Jews of White Russia ought to have been grateful for passing from the anarchy of disintegrating Poland to the protection of Katherine’s stable and enlightened regime.32 The first proclamation, in September 1772, in White Russia on the part of the commander of the occupying army and the first governor, Field Marshal Zakhar Chernyshev (1722–1784), spoke in the new language of enlightened absolutism. In return for loyalty to the new regime, rights and liberties would be preserved, and the Jews would not suffer discrimination: By this solemn assurance of freedom of worship and the sanctity and integrity of communal and individual property, self-evidently the Jewish communities dwelling in the cities and on the lands that were annexed to the Russian Empire would remain and retain all the liberties they now had in matters of religion and property, since her majesty, the Russian empress’s love of mankind did not permit her to make an exception of them alone from the grace accorded to everyone and from future happiness under her blessed rule, so long as, for their part, they live as faithful subjects, fittingly accepting authority, and dealing in commerce and the crafts, according to their status.33

Her declaration was a foundational document in the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe, even though little actually changed. By making the well-being of her subjects a goal of the state, Katherine was embracing humanism, and the idea that every group deserved the same treatment appeared to presage the principles of tolerance. Perhaps the leader of the Hasidism in White Russia, Shneur Zalman was referring to this, twenty-five years later, when he praised the freedom of worship introduced by Katherine.34 John Klier, whose study on Russian policy toward the Jews within the new boundaries beginning with the Partition of Poland is among the most exhaustive, downplayed the importance of the declaration, because it related to only a small number of Jews at this stage of the First Partition. Nevertheless, although it did not provide an exact definition of the Jews’ status and its language was very vague, it was the first edict that tolerated the presence of the Jews in Russia. For a moment, the Jews were given status equal to that of other groups in

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White Russia, although the tension between the intentions, the policies, and their implementation and the negative image of the Jews was evident. Klier pointed out the gap between the declaration of principles formulated in Saint Petersburg and the direct encounter with the Jews of the Russian officers and officials who were responsible for the region. The report by the governor of Mogilev, Michael Kakhovskii, stands out in its hostility. It was sent to Chernyshev a few months after the occupation, and it describes his first impression of the 32,000 Jews under his rule. The picture it paints could not be blacker. Under the heading “A Description of the Present State of the Jews in the District of Mogilev,” the memorandum begins with a sentence conveying a hostile image: “The Jews, though they do not get drunk, are lazy, tend to deceit, love to sleep, believe in superstitions, are used to filthiness, and are bad housekeepers. They all arrived recently, and they multiply in the places where the rule over them is weak and does not preserve justice.” Taking a penetrating critical view of the central place occupied by the Jews in the feudal system and the economy of the estates of the Polish nobility, he portrays them as a population harmful to everyone around them. As lessees of the license to sell alcoholic beverages and to collect transit fees, they cause mortal injury to the peasants and weaken them, he alleges. In business, “they are dishonest men, tending to fraud, and banding together with thieves and robbers.” They deal in counterfeit coins and sell damaged goods. Increased consumption of wheat leads to a rise in the price of bread. The result is that “they bring the peasants and the estate owners to absolute ruin, and one can say that the estate owners are their agents, and the peasants are their slaves, and the Jews are their masters.”35 No program of reform is recorded to improve this gloomy picture. Anyone who read this report would gain the impression that the Jews of Poland were a dreadful and irredeemable danger, in glaring contradiction to the spirit of the proclamation that promised Katherine’s “love of mankind” to the Jews. Some of these harsh claims penetrated the empress’s court and were expressed in a letter she wrote to Diderot: The Jews were “swarming” in White Russia, and their entry into Russia could damage small merchants, because these people drew everything to themselves. This was a kernel of the idea that was later consolidated of restricting the Jews of Russia to the Pale of Settlement.36 In this tension between the revulsion, rejection, and criticism of Jewish characteristics and the conviction that the Jews were a damaging presence and the aspiration to establish a well-ordered state with an intellectual climate that demanded doing what was rational, worthy, and humane, the Jewish Question in one of its modern guises was in effect born of the Partition of Poland. The three dividing states, as well as independent Poland, would now be forced to

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determine a policy toward the Jewish minority in their borders and, by means of laws and regulations, to propose reforms that would spread within the interval between keeping the Jews at a distance and integrating them and preparing them for citizenship. Within the Jewish Question, Katherine II, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, Friedrich II, and also Poniatowski would isolate a series of problems demanding a solution, including the structure of Jewish occupations, their influence on the rest of the population, and the degree of autonomy given to the communities. Thus, in 1772, the historical process began that would transform the Jews of Eastern Europe from a religious community included in the feudal system into an ethnic nation within a multinational empire. The pressure on self-rule was particularly strong, as, from the very first days after the annexation, the new rulers began to restrict Jewish autonomy, striving to subject it to the mastery of the central government.37 The slogans of the Enlightenment provided inspiration for the reforms, although, for most of the Jews in what had formerly been Poland, the increasing and deepening intervention of the authorities in their lives was seen more as a series of harsh edicts than as improvement and reform.

Bet w e en a “Ne w Wor ld” a n d a Tops y-T u rv y Wor ld Representatives of the opposite approach began to appear on the roadsides: Jews who regarded the concern of the authorities as an opportunity to effect a dramatic internal change. Not only had they internalized the values of the centralized state, but they also sought to bring it to penetrate more deeply and initiate reforms. This was the goal of thirty-two-year-old Josef Levine, originally from Holleschau, Moravia, who had supported himself for more than a decade as a private tutor in Berlin and Potsdam. In a memorandum he sent to the king of Prussia on March 30, 1772, he set out an ambitious and far-reaching program proposing that the state should establish an alternative Jewish educational system. This private tutor had learned the vocabulary of the interests of an absolutist regime very well, and he identified with the critique of the Enlightenment. Traditional education was, he claimed, in the hands of teachers who perpetuated the flawed moral character of the Jews and made their pupils into ignorant dreamers. Were his program to be accepted, it would be possible to educate them as better citizens who would be more useful to the state. Another advantage of the proposed program would be the reversal of economic damage. He estimated that every year, about five hundred Jewish teachers of Polish origin sent their income, which came to 125,000 thalers, beyond the borders of Prussia. According to Levine’s educational reform, the state would take

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responsibility for the teachers. He himself would receive the title of Director of Jewish Schools in the Kingdom from the king, with the authority to appoint teachers after they passed examinations, to supervise their work, to authorize books printed in Hebrew with his signature after paying a special tax, and to set the curriculum. The reformed education system would apply close supervision, require licenses, and employ teachers who settled in Prussia, so their income would be spent there. Both sides had an interest in this; the Jews would receive advanced and reformed education, and Prussia would gain citizens who contributed to the state. Levin asked for special privileges for himself: exemption from the special taxes and the right to live where he chose.38 This initiative by a private individual of relatively low status who had internalized the new values, who sought to take responsibility for the future of his community, and who made an unusual recommendation to circumvent the machinery of the community would seem to be yet another expression of daring individualism characteristic of the period. However, the Prussian officials who read the memorandum with suspicion decided that Levine not only lacked the appropriate credentials for a senior administrative position, but that in fact he merely wanted to get rich, and his only desire was to make money and secure benefits. He was rejected outright, which apparently broke Levine’s spirit. His expectations had been great, and after his memorandum was rejected, one can imagine the anger and frustration he felt after having imagined himself climbing to a senior governmental position. The man who had envisioned the reform of Jewish education in Prussia chose radical withdrawal and absolute estrangement from his group of origin, whose flaws he had sought to repair. An item that appeared in the newspaper about a year later announced that Levine, the son of a rabbi in Moravia, had converted to Christianity in a ceremony that took place in the Dorothea Church of Berlin in the presence of the queen, and he was now called Christian Neustadt.39 Five years after this conversion, without the involvement of the state, the first modern Jewish school would be established by the private initiative of a philanthropist. Although it was never implemented, Levine’s plan opened up the new discussion of reforming the Jews by improving their education. The basic critical and modern assumption was that many aspects of life in Jewish society were faulty, harmful to it and to the state, and required rehabilitation in a process that demanded deep intervention from outside and cooperation from within the society. In exactly those months of 1772, the state authorities in northern Germany penetrated an area that would appear to be intimate, unique, and dictated solely by the laws of the religion when they demanded a change in Jewish burial

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practices. The opinion of another apostate, Eliahu Magnus, who had served as a ritual slaughterer in the community of Schwerin until he came into conflict with it and chose to convert to Christianity and change his name to Karl Ludwig Frederiki, convinced Duke Friedrich that the Jews’ insistence on burying their dead on the very day of death had no solid basis in the Torah. The man who initiated the intervention was Professor Tychsen, who sent a letter to the Duke of Mecklenberg-Schwerin on February 19, 1772, to make him aware of the gravity of the problem and to urge him to impose the authority of the state. With concern, he pointed out this worrisome flaw in the Jews’ way of life, which a well-ordered state could not ignore. Medical science teaches that a person can sink into a coma, thought to be dead, and buried alive. The law of the state supervenes the law of religion, and in this case the restriction was beneficial to the Jews. “Can a ruler endowed with a good conscience keep silence in the presence of such cruel and inhuman conduct?” The duke, who was heedful of the Enlightenment, espoused reforms and, among other things, had abolished torture. Indeed, he saw that hasty Jewish burial was problematic for his humanistic policies. Two months later, on April 30, 1772, the order was promulgated requiring delay of burial for at least three days, out of fear that people might be buried while still alive.40 Convinced that this decree infringed upon their religious autonomy, the leaders of the Schwerin community launched a struggle. Within a short time, one of the lay leaders appeared at Moses Mendelssohn’s door in Berlin, showed him the decree of “His Majesty, the Duke,” and gave him a letter asking him to serve as the community’s “spokesman and patron before the nations and ministers.” Their hearts were broken, they wrote, and time was running out, as the duke gave them only a short delay to obtain opinions in support of their demand to rescind the grave edict. With Mendelssohn’s unique abilities and his “vast knowledge of many exalted sciences in our country,” he would certainly know how to change the prince’s mind. They were under attack “to divert the nation of the Lord to follow the law of the nations,” and, by being forced to delay burial of the dead, they risked losing their identity.41 At the time of this confrontation between the state and the Jewish community, the philosopher from Berlin attained exceptional authority and status. The lay leaders and the rabbi recognized him as a new type of intercessor who was able to mediate. In his reply, Mendelssohn did not refuse the mission, but he also used it as an opportunity to promote a principled Jewish policy in response to the new challenges posed by the state and by science. Mendelssohn’s letter to the community of Schwerin, dated June 9, 1772, took the form of a reprimand. Why were you seized by such panic, he asked them, and why

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did you think it was an aggressive and hostile act, meant to force you to violate a religious prohibition? The duke’s concern in requesting delay of burial had a basis in rabbinical sources, which are so sensitive to human life, and the ancient sages shared the doubt of “the sages of medicine” between a comatose state and death. They buried their dead in caves and niches, and, like the scientists of their day, they knew there was “no absolute sign of death.” Why not return to the ancient custom, Mendelssohn wrote, suggesting an alternative manner of burial that neither contradicted science nor flouted the government edict: “Why not build a cave in the cemetery and purify the dead there, according to custom, and watch over them for three days and then bury them?”42 Within two or three weeks, Mendelssohn became aware that a delegation from Schwerin had previously been sent to Jacob Emden in Altona to ask for a Halakhic decision from him in support of their appeal against the duke’s edict. In the surprising letter that Emden sent him, he learned that it was he who had recommended addressing the philosopher, whose German was excellent, and who was more suitable “to explain and sweeten the matter, so that it will enter the ears [of ministers and kings].” At this point, the issue of delaying burial became a matter of principle—an internal debate, hidden from the public eye, that took place in correspondence between Berlin and Altona. Mendelssohn’s intervention on behalf of the Jews of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was successful. In addition to his Hebrew letter to the community proposing an alternative form of burial, Mendelssohn wrote a memorandum in German for the community, affirming that the order to delay burial did infringe upon the Jews’ obligation to follow the dictates of their religion. However, he recommended that they must delay burial until the death was confirmed by a licensed physician. The new arrangement obviated the special concern of the duke’s decree. Science, in the figure of the physician, represented the authority of the state to supervise burial, and the Jewish community no longer had to fear that laws were being imposed on them contradictory to their religion.43 Warm expressions of mutual admiration (“my lord and teacher and rabbi,” on the one hand, and “the well-educated leader in Torah,” on the other) in their correspondence did not conceal that there was a difference of opinion between fear for the integrity of the tradition and boldness in adapting it to the new world. Emden reprimanded Mendelssohn: “It is impossible for a Jewish person to deviate from the words [of the sages] by a hairsbreadth; he who parts from them is like someone departing from his life.” He pronounced the conservative principle of absolute obedience to the ancients, and he regarded the proposal for alternative burial in caves as imaginary and dangerous, because he realized that it concealed a policy of openness and blurred the boundaries between Jews

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and gentiles: “The matter was raised by the nations, who seek a plot to follow their practice, for we have been commanded to separate from them and from their laws.” If the opinion of physicians was considered, he noted, the tradition would completely collapse. He called on Mendelssohn to reaffirm the hierarchy of authority: a true believer knew “that there is no substance to a physician void of Torah,” and Emden did not wish to suspect that Mendelssohn opposed the instructions of the sages. However, Mendelssohn clung to his view, and the angry rabbi nearly went out of his mind, upbraiding Mendelssohn for not admitting the truth that he was allowing himself to deviate from the path and to “innovate.” For his own good, he must abandon his dream and accept Emden’s religious authority, and in any event, he insinuated that Mendelssohn’s position was weak, as he was suspected “of turning to the vanities of the Gentiles.”44 This confrontation—and especially the accusation that Mendelssohn did not accept and obey rabbinical authority—revealed yet more of the increasing tension between the rabbinical elite, with its sense of leadership, and the new elite of the Maskilim. A decade later, Mendelssohn gave Isaac Euchel the correspondence for publication in the Hameasef, and he praised the government initiative—“the edict promulgated by the seat of law and justice of his Highness, the righteous duke of Mecklenburg, who loved his entire nation who dwell under his rule and felt mercy toward the Jews as a father feels mercy for his children.”45 Emden’s suspicions deserve special attention. Did Mendelssohn belong to a group that threatened the religion? In the context of his time, what does it mean to argue that a Jew who turns to “the vanities of foreigners” is not faithful to separation from non-Jews and does not obey rabbinical authority? What label was to be attached to the philosopher, and why must he be wary of those whom Emden called “the bitter souls”—that is, the fanatics who would risk their souls to combat him? Despite Emden’s admiration for Mendelssohn, he set a limit for him with confidence in the unshakable authority of the guardian of the walls of the religion; in any confrontation between the dictates of the Torah and those of science, the Torah, as interpreted by the rabbinical elite, must take precedence. Observation of several corners of Jewish life in 1772 reveals the signs of curiosity, adaptation to culture, the desire for personal freedom, and the permissiveness against which the guardians of the walls of religion had protested with concern even from the beginning of the century, hoping for their disappearance. While Mendelssohn was corresponding with Emden in rabbinical Hebrew, he was also planning a trip to the baths in Pyrmont, in Saxony. He was yearning not only for the opportunity to recover from his illness by bathing in the waters and drinking them, but also to spend time with other intellectuals

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and men and women of good Jewish and Christian society.46 One such woman, Henriette Herz, regarded herself as fortunate, having been born in the enlightened society of Berlin, and thus she was able to develop excellent cultural taste. As a girl of eight or nine, she already was studying French, music, and dancing with private tutors and becoming an avid reader of novels in French and German. She went to the Italian opera once a year with her parents. While she was preparing to appear in a comedy to be produced in the private home of wealthy Jews, the lay leaders of the Berlin community forbade it. She couldn’t accept that decision and protested against the leaders’ interference. With a sense of injustice—and taking a step that, in retrospect, could be seen as restricting the area of communal supervision—she surprised the leaders with the argument that it was unworthy of honorable men like themselves to pay attention to a play put on by children. According to her, they relented.47 On the stage of the Drury Lane Theater, a Jewish character named Naphtali appeared in a play by Richard Cumberland (1732–1811), The Fashionable Lover, in January 1772. Naphtali spoke broken English with a ridiculous accent and played the stereotypical role of the ugly, intriguing Jew, who represented the corruption of avaricious English merchants. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that he was also an integral part of high society in London.48 At the same time, a pair of Portuguese Jewish lovers challenged the Jewish community there when they resisted restrictions of freedom to pursue happiness. Todd Endelman explained that the inability or refusal of the synagogue leadership to acknowledge the character of Jewish life in a liberal state led to several tumultuous confrontations with members of the community who refused to accept its authority. Joshua and Lara Ximenes fled to Paris to marry in secret, against the will of the bride’s parents. Her father pursued them, had an arrest warrant issued in France, and persuaded the leaders of the Bevis Marks synagogue to excommunicate the couple when they returned to London. A leaflet that was published entirely rejected this interference in the couple’s intimacy, saying that threats of punishment no longer deterred people and supervision of this kind was unacceptable in England, because “in this fortunate nation,” no fool would dare to deny individual freedom. Persecution of the lovers was contrary to justice and humanity, and it was an unbearable insult to the love they felt for each other, which they wished to fulfill of their own free will. Persecuting them was a tyrannical action reminiscent of the barbarity of the Inquisition, from which the Marranos had fled. Excommunication might frighten old women and children, but reasonable people were indifferent to it by now.49 Leah, the daughter of Jewish merchant Mordecai Levi, of Ancona, who hosted Casanova in his home in 1772, was one of the many women he seduced.

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He was close to fifty, and she was a young girl. In his memoirs, he not only described her sexual response (“In the first ecstasy of delight I felt her tremble in every limb”) and how she aroused him (“she let her chemise and petticoat drop, and lay down beside me in a state of nature”), but also how she had been induced to eat food that wasn’t kosher. They conducted their thrilling liaison in secret and ate shellfish together: “She ate them eagerly, assuring me that it was the first time she had had the pleasure of tasting shellfish.” Casanova added his own interpretation, noting that it was not surprising that a girl “who breaks the law of her religion with such levity . . . [and] likes pleasure and does not conceal it” would also free herself of the restrictions of her religion in the erotic realm: “We slept together every night, not excepting those nights forbidden by the laws of Moses.”50 Signs of the change in the norms of sexual behavior in the younger generation and to the weakening of restraints and supervision are also evident in Amsterdam. Yosef Kaplan pointed out the new trends, as young people “were now less and less reluctant to give free rein to their erotic desires.” A regulation instituted by the leaders of the Portuguese community on November 1, 1772, reveals the displeasure and frustration of the H.akham Shlomo Shalem, because of his failure to impose religious discipline. A few months after wedding ceremonies where the rabbi officiated, it was discovered that several of the couples “had violated the rules of decency and honesty, which are obligatory before the wedding,” and they had had sexual relations while only betrothed. Revealing the delinquents’ identity and denying the honors usually given in the synagogue after the birth of a son or daughter now seemed like too feeble a method of coping with the flouting of religious prohibitions.51 When Israel Ben Issachar Ber, a scholar descended from a Polish family from the rabbinical elite, arrived in Amsterdam, he was seized with astonishment. Finding it hard to contain the sights of the great metropolis, which was teeming with life and where he witnessed the free and permissive behavior of the men and women of the Jewish community, he was flooded with powerful feelings of apprehension, insult, and frustration. He came to the conclusion that a great crisis was taking place before his eyes, and his critical reaction is recorded in an exceptional work of 1772, A New World, preserved in manuscript. In 138 densely written pages, in rich rhymed Hebrew prose combining stories and theatrical scenes, his parody attacked the “new world,” which he saw as no less than the destruction of decent Jewish society. The immediate urge to write came from “the burning of the comedy,” for a destructive fire had broken out in the theater in Amsterdam in the middle of a performance on May 11, 1772, and the Jewish survivors who had been in the audience inspired him to write in protest and

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condemnation (“they saw a dreadful deed, and they did not learn a lesson, and no awe rose to their heart”). A New World displays a colorful panorama of the hedonistic life in Amsterdam as a great carnival, noisy and seductive, so that almost no one can resist the temptation of taking part in it. In dozens of satirical descriptions and also in cartoons on the title page, Issachar did his utmost to describe the great rush to enjoy the forbidden pleasures of life. He presented the overt sexuality of revealing clothes and of mixed assemblies of men and women. He ridiculed powdered wigs in the latest style and condemned the addiction to card playing, the amusements of the city streets, and the theater and the opera, along with the indifference to prohibitions and the contempt for religious duties. It appeared to him that the dam had burst, that religious supervision had failed, and that nothing could stop those who threw off the yoke and yearned for pleasure. Ber characterized the various passages with remarks that show awareness of a very immediate crisis. He discussed the grave alternation in Jewish history— “Recently Torah has been forgotten by the Jews”—and noted that 1772 was “the second year of a desiccated generation” and “the year of the generation of reason in the month of a new world.” He also felt that social stability had been upset by the exaggerated devotion to fashion (“until the year of the French mode”). Underlying his great pessimism was a stinging sense of insult. His own traditional dress and observance of religious customs made the author and other Torah scholars a target for harassment and contempt in the city streets. His fears, his cries of woe, and his polarized picture of the world derived from his surprise at finding himself attacked and on the margins of Jewish society: “They insult the angels of the Lord [Torah scholars], to send lightning and arrows, to mock them with winking eyes, and the sages and scribes were like thorns for them.” He understood that loss of respect for Torah scholars and the desire of the citizens of the “new world” to be free of religious supervision changed the relations of power and even the norms of Jewish society. Even if the pleasure seekers in Amsterdam did not intend to cut themselves off from the community and the synagogue, the rabbinical elite had not yet collapsed, and the processes of secularization affected only a minority of Jewish society, the situation was already worrisome, rebellious, and contrary to everything that was correct and worthy in his eyes.52 A comprehensive survey of the year of the Partition of Poland—the dispute over delaying burial, proposals for educational reform, and the persecution of the Hasidim—cannot fail to identify a number of challenges that caused concern, even fear, for the loss of what was familiar and stable. Through the windows of A New World in 1772, the rifts caused by continued cultural adaptation

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were evident. Religious permissiveness went beyond current fashion and evolved into the desire to loosen the restrictions of the religion, rejection of Torah study as the highest value that molds the society, and alarming defiance of rabbinical authority. In the wild and hedonistic world that Israel Ben Issachar Ber painted in vibrant color, he revealed the rebellion against discipline and control over private life. Portrayal of the new world as a topsy-turvy world shows more than anything the deep difference in the interpretation of reality within Jewish society. The more the new world matured and became a way of life and social experience, the fiercer became the reactions of those loyal to the tradition, and thus the religion was consolidated as an oppositional, fearful, and defensive attitude.

Note s 1. Zemir ‘aritsim veh.aravot tsurim, Oleksonitz 5532 (1772), section 6, cited here according to Mordecai Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem bashanim 5532–5575 (1772–1815), vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 64–67. On the first stages of opposite to Hasidism see Shimon Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), 107–125; Immanuel Etkes, Yah.id bedoro: hagaon mivilna—demut vedimui (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1998), chs. 3 and 4; Gershon David Hundert, Jews in PolandLithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), ch. 9. 2. Zemir ‘aritsim veh.aravot tsurim, cited here according to Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 64. “Igeret rashaz el h.asidav bevilna,” 5557 (1797), Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 198–199. And see Etkes, Yah.id bedoro, 84–98; Immanuel Etkes, Ba’al hatanya: rabi shneur zalman milyadi vereshita shel h.asidut h.abad (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2012), 225–229. 3. See Zemir ‘aritsim veh.aravot tsurim, 36–69; Etkes, Yah.id bedoro, 98–108; Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut, 114–125. 4. Zemir ‘aritsim veh.aravot tsurim, sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. See also H.ayim Hillel Ben Sason, “Ishiuto shel hagra vehashpa’ato hahisotirt,” Zion 31 (1966): 204–212. 5. “Igeret miqahal vilna leqahal brody,” 5533, in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 70–74; and see Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut, 128–130. 6. Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 84–88; Kerem Habad 4 (1992): 111–113; H.aim Meir Heilman, Sefer beit rabbi, vol. 1 (Berdyczow: Sheftel, 1902), fols. 42b–43a. See Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 228–229; Rapaport-Albert, “Hatenua’ hah.asidit ah.arei shnat 1772: Retsef mivni utemura,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Socological Aspects of Hasidism, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 232–233, 253–254. 7. Kerem Habad 4 (1992): 111–113. See Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 246–247.

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8. Yehoshua Mondshine, “Shnei maasarav shel rabeinu hazaqen leor te’udot h.adashot” (“The Two Incarcerations of our Elder Rabbi in the Light of New Documents”), Kerem H.abad 4, no. 1 (1992): 45–53. 9. Ibid., 47. 10. Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut, 127. 11. A. Y. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha; meh.qarim betoldot galitsia bameah hashmone-‘esre (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1956), 272. And see Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 180–191. 12. Zikhronot r. dov mibolechow (5483–5561) (1723–1801), ed. M. Wischnitzer (Berlin: Kelal, 1922), 92–93, and see Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 190. 13. Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), 590; Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), 197–199. 14. Hans Pleschinski, ed., Voltaire—Friedrich der Grosse Briefwechsel (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994), 486–489. 15. Derek Beales, Joseph II: Volume 1, In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 298–299; Andrea Blank, “D’Holbach on Self-Esteem, Justice, and Cosmopolitanism,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 49, no. 4 (2016): 439–453. 16. Olivier Bernier, Imperial Mother, Royal Daughter: The Correspondence of Marie Antoinette and Maria Theresa (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986), 254. 17. Edward Crankshaw, Maria Theresa (London: Bloomsbury Reader, 2013), 346–348; Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland, 198–199; Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, 589. 18. Simon Dixon, Katherine the Great (New York: Ecco, 2009), 202–203. 19. On the Russo-Turkish war and on the first Partition of Poland, see Herbert H. Kaplan, The First Partition of Poland (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962); Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, 588–595; M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713–1783 (London: Longman, 1961), 234–237; L. W. Cowie, Eighteenth Century Europe (London: Bell & Hyman, 1963), 281–284; Isser Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, Tradition and Progress, 1715–1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 48–50; Beales, Joseph II, 286–300; Adam Zamoyski, Poland, A History (London: William Cllins, 2009), ch. 12; Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland, ch. 13; Dixon, Katherine the Great, ch. 8; Franz A. J. Szabo, “Austrian First Impressions of Ethnic Relations in Galicia: The Case of Governor Anton von Pergen,” Polin 12 (1999): 49–60. 20. See Kaplan, The First Partition of Poland, ch. 14; Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland, ch. 14. 21. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, par. 39.

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22. See Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), ch. 2. 23. Selma Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, vols. 1, 3 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 40; Raphael Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, dorot ah.aronim, vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1960), 52. 24. See Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of Absolutism in Europe (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1985), 147. 25. See Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, vols. 1, 3. 221–224; ibid., vol. 3, pt. 2, 511–512; Albert A. Bruer, Geschichte der Juden in Preussen (1750–1820) (Frankfurt: Campus, 1991), 77–78; Walter Schwarz, “Frederick the Great, his Jews and his Porcelain,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 11 (1966): 300–305. 26. Stern, Der Preussische Staat und die Juden, vol. 3, pt. 2, 2. See Bruer, Geschichte der Juden in Preussen, ch. 6; Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Littman Library, 2010), 226; Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, 50. 27. See N.M Gelber, “Brody,” Arim veimaut beyisrael, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Insitute, 1956), 116–119. 28. On the first years of Austrian rule in Galicia, see Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 141–153; Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, ch. 6; Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, 11–34; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1, ch. 8; Grodziski, “The Jewish Question in Galicia: The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Josef II, 1772–1790,” Polin 12 (1999): 61–72; Joshua Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), ch. 1. 29. Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), ch. 2. 30. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha, 143–149. 31. Shimon Dubnow, Divrei yemei ‘am ‘olam, vol. 7 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965), 140. 32. Richard Pipes, “Katherine II and the Jews,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 5, no. 2 (1975): 3–20. 33. Shmuel Ettinger, “Heyesodot vehamegamot be’itsuv mediniuto shel hashilton harusi klapei hayehudim ‘im h.aluqat polin,” Bein polin lerusia (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1994), 217–233 (see document on 218). See Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, ch. 5; John Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia, 1772–1825 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 60. 34. See Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 71; Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, 101–111; Ettinger, “Heyesodot vehamegamot be’itsuv mediniuto shel hashilton harusi klapei hayehudim ‘im h.akuqat polin,” 218–219; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1, 227–331. 35. Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews, ch. 3; Ettinger, “Heyesodot vehamegamot be’itsuv mediniuto shel hashilton harusi klapei hayehudim ‘im h.akuqat polin,”

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224–225. The memorandum of Michael Kakhovskii (1773) in Yehuda Slotsky, “Letoldot hayehudim berusia besof hameah hayod-h.et (shalosh te’udot),” He’avar 19 (1972): 74–78. 36. Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews, 36. 37. Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 29. 38. Moritz Stern, “Jugenduntericht in der Berliner jüdischen Gemeinde während des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 19 (1928): 39–67. 39. See Moritz Stern, “Bemerkung zum: Jugenduntericht in der Berliner jüdischen Gemeinde während des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der JüdischLiterarischen Gesellschaft 20 (1929): 379–380. 40. See Siegfried Silberstain, “Mendelssohn und Mecklenburg,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 1 (1929): 233–244, 257–290; HansUwe Lammel and Michael Busch, “Haskala, Pietismus und der Rostocker Orientalist Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815),” Aschkenas 27, no. 1 (2017): 195–238; Moshe Samet, Hah.adash asur min hatora: praqim betoldot haortodoqsia (Jerusalem: The Dinur Center, 2005), 157–227; Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 229–230; Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication of America, 1973), 288–294. 41. Letter from the community of Schwerin to Mendelssohn, 15 Iyyar 5532 (May 18, 1772), in Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 154–155. 42. Letter from Mendelssohn to the community of Schwerin, 8 Sivan 5532 (June 9, 1772), Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19. 156–157. 43. Letter from Jacob Emden to Mendelssohn, 25 Sivan 5532 (June 26, 1772), Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 157–158; Silberstain, “Mendelssohn und Mecklenburg,” 284–286. 44. The correspondence between Emden and Mendelssohn: Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 159–168. 45. Introduction to the correspondence between Mendelssohn and Emden entitled “H.evrat dorshei lashon ‘ever,” Hameasef 2 (5545) [1795], p. 154. 46. Letter from Mendelssohn to Georg Zimermann (June 25, 1772), Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, part 2, 27–28. 47. Henriette Herz, In Erinnerungen, Briefen und Zeugnissen (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1984), 11–20. 48. Richard Cumberland, The Fashionable Lover: A Comedy (London: Printed for W. Griffin, 1772); and see Louis Zangwill, “Richard Cumberland Centenary Memorial Paper,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 7 (1911– 1914): 147–176; Michael Ragussis, Theatrical Nation: Jews and Other Outlandish

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Englishemen in Georgian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 104–107. 49. Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158–1917) (London: Soncino Press, 1938), 170–176. See Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 147. 50. Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, vol. 12, trans. Willard R. Trask (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 163–185. Quotations here are taken from Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, Venetian Years, The First Complete and Unabridged English Translation by Arthur Machen (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1894), Guternberg.org, March 14, 2021, http://www.gutenberg.org/files /2981/2981-h/2981-h.htm. 51. Yosef Kaplan, “The Threat of Eros in Eighteenth-Century Sephardi Amsterdam,” in An Alternative Path to Modernity, The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 280–300. 52. Israel Ben Issachar Ber, Ze sefer niqra ‘olam h.adash 5532 (MS in private collection of M. Gans of Amsterdam), microfilm of copy of MS from 1791, Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the National Library of Jerusalem, 3439.

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“LET EVERY MAN DO AS HE PLEASES” The Winds of Revolt

The dispute about delaying burials raised the level of tension between Rabbi Jacob Emden, who rejected any change and warned against the penetration of scientists as a source of authority parallel with rabbis, and the philosopher Mendelssohn, who believed in a humanistic Judaism consistent with the Enlightenment. A few months later, the gap between the two became a deep chasm. In Mendelssohn’s last letter to Emden (October 26, 1773), the humanistic sentiment became a cry of protest and defiance. Mendelssohn had asked Emden about the fate of “the righteous among the nations” who obeyed the laws of nature and whether they merited life in the world to come by virtue of their shared humanity. Emden answered that Maimonides was correct in ruling that these gentiles “must accept the seven [Noahide] commandments because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it in the Torah,” but if they came to accept these ethical and social commandments merely by dint of their reason, and not by acknowledgment of divine revelation to the Jewish people, they were not worthy of the redemption of their souls. Mendelssohn’s entire conception of religious toleration depended on this sensitive and nearly existential question about redemption of the soul. Hence, he did not hesitate to tell Emden that he repudiated this position, which excluded non-Jews and contradicted the principle of equality among human beings in the most basic and profound manner. He found it inconceivable that “all those who dwell on earth from the farthest east to the farthest west, except for us, will descend into the pit of destruction and live in disgrace for all flesh, if they did not believe in the Torah that was given as an inheritance only to the community of Jacob.” The doctrine of preference for the Jews was both a moral injustice and a contradiction and flaw in the conception of a merciful God, who desired the happiness

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and well-being of all of humanity: “What will those nations do, upon whom the light of the Torah never shone? . . . Could it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, would reproach His creatures, destroy them, and wipe out their name, though they did nothing wrong?”1

Th e R ise of a Ne w Gener ation Emden’s reply, which only reinforced his claim that a non-Jew could not gain life in the world to come if he did not acknowledge the God of Israel, did not assuage Mendelssohn. He maintained his humanistic position in opposing it. Three years earlier, he had expressed this decisively in a personal letter to the crown prince Wilhelm Ferdinand von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1735–1806), saying that, of necessity, all human beings were destined for eternal happiness by their Creator; a religion that excluded other people could not be a true one. Although this was primarily a critique of Christianity, Mendelssohn hoped that the spiritual leaders of Judaism would, like him, acknowledge the equality of believers in all religions.2 Mendelssohn’s rejection of Maimonides’s conclusion and his disappointment with Emden transcended the boundaries of dispute over the interpretation of an issue in Jewish thought. Here Mendelssohn was joining forces with the revolutionaries of the 1770s and early 1780s who were perturbed by the gap between worthy humane values and the imperfect situation of the world. “It was inconceivable,” he argued, that people should act and think that way, especially in these times. This attitude became the fuel that powered criticism and revolution. It influenced the abolition of torture in Poland and Austria (1776), and it reverberated in the initiatives in France and Bohemia to reduce taxation and the obligation of forced labor imposed on peasants, on the reforms in general education sponsored by Maria Theresa (1774), and in the edicts on toleration issued by Joseph II (1781). It was also the basis for the revolution against George III by the thirteen British colonies, which declared that his continued policy of repression and injustice was unacceptable and whose Declaration of Independence, based on natural justice, was a dramatic step. The humanistic trends that emerged in modern thought from the beginning of the eighteenth century and even earlier among thinkers like John Locke—striving for happiness in this world, belief in human autonomy, and recognition of the human right to life, liberty, and equality—received revolutionary political expression in the Declaration of Independence. In the eyes of the framers, the declaration included no less than the entire century’s ideal of what was good and worthy. The expression of this ideal appeared in parallel in many other places and was

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voiced repeatedly. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise (1779) cried out that the bloody rivalry among religions was madness, and it could not be that God wished for the dictatorial rule of one religion over the others. When Mendelssohn sought to exert his influence to prevent the expulsion of Jews in Switzerland (1775) and Saxony (1777), he argued in the name of humanistic sentiment that it was inconceivable for human beings to be punished only because their religion was different. Criticism of traditional Jewish education led to the establishment of the first modern Jewish school and the project of translating the Torah into German (1778). The modern spirit, which refused to be reconciled to flaws in the leadership, even penetrated the first printed Hasidic book (Toldot ya’aqov yosef, 1780). The author, Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye (?–1783), called for the rejection of the authority over the masses of arrogant Torah scholars who sought honor (“Jewish demons”). In response, the Mitnagdim, the opponents of Hasidism, renewed the struggle more vigorously. Emden devoted his final strength to the struggle to block these trends, to identify enemies, and to erect barriers against the new spirits. He cried out almost in physical pain (“the hair on my flesh stood up, terrors shook me, and my eyes darkened with anger”) that it was inconceivable to leave the world lawless and abandoned. About a year and a half before his death, on the Sabbath before Yom Kippur (September 10, 1774), Emden gave a sermon to the community of Altona. In effect, this was the testament of a concerned, conservative community leader who saw with mournful eyes how the collapse of his world was hastening. His reproachful sermon was spontaneous, not delivered from a written draft, and it strove for far more than revealing “the blemishes of the generation,” like other preachers. He declared that it was his duty to do no less than to save the Jews from disaster, because “the affliction has appeared at the edge of the camp, caused by those who break out, whom we must fence off, so that fire won’t go out and find the thorns, I must warn the people, so that innocent and honest people won’t be burned by their ember.” Once again, he attacked the Sabbateans, who misappropriated the secrets of the Kabbalah “and overturned the bowl.” However, he regarded philosophical heresy as the most dangerous adversary of all.3 Skepticism based on science and reason justified wild and radical revolt on the part of the new heretics, for whom nothing was holy anymore. From contempt for the commandments of the Oral Law, they slid down the slippery slope to neglect of the written Torah. Torah scholars were mocked and humiliated and were losing their authority. In that sermon, which was laden with frustration and disappointment, Emden’s recommendation to the Altona community was radical. Seeing that it was no longer possible to convince the heretics to recant, the supervisors of religion like him could only try to save

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“the brethren of the seed of Israel who are still worthy.” In his opinion, Jewish society could no longer contain the internal revolt, and the time had come for schism, for self-separation, and for distancing “the criminals and rebels,” even denying them Jewish burial. Jewish solidarity was unsustainable, because those “wild people are certainly not of the seed of Israel, only descendants of the mixed multitude [who left Egypt with the Israelites], and we are no longer their responsible guarantors.”4 These were his last words to the public. He lost his eyesight almost completely and only with a great effort managed to have his sermon printed after dictating it to a scribe, though he was unable to check whether it had been properly transcribed. Emden was nearly eighty years old when he died (April 19, 1776), and within a short time, an eloquent eulogy for the hero of the wars of religion was issued from Mendelssohn’s household, written in rhymes, and printed in Berlin as a special pamphlet. Solomon of Dubno, a bibliophile and early Maskil who belonged to the group that met, as noted, in Amsterdam in the 1760s and was now living in Berlin as a private tutor for Mendelssohn’s son, portrayed the dual world of the man he called “the esteemed Jacob, exemplar of the generation.” On the one hand, Emden was a prolific and original author of Torah literature, and on the other hand, he was “a zealot, the son of a zealot,” who did battle against his many enemies. As a steadfast warrior, an embodiment of the biblical Phinehas, he never was deterred by his rivals, nor did he retreat: “Leader of the army of the Lord, from his youth he fought in the battles of the Lord against the enemies of the Lord. He struck without pity and did not sheathe his sword until he struck down the enemies of the religion.”5 During the 1770s, several of the central figures of the eighteenth century gradually left the stage. Louis XV died of smallpox in Versailles (May 10, 1774), and Louis XVI, who was twenty, and Marie Antoinette, who was nineteen, ascended to the throne. On the day of their coronation in the cathedral of Reims (11 Sivan, 5535, according to the Hebrew calendar), the Jews of Paris gathered in the home of Israel Bernard de Valabrègue, “scribe and translator for the king of France,” for a prayer of thanksgiving and a public demonstration of patriotism. “Long live the king!” shouted the assembly, again and again, and in rhymed Hebrew they blessed him: “For generation after generation you will have glory.” The clouds of danger were not yet visible on the horizon, and for the new king, whose life was to end in the tempest of the revolution after only sixteen years of rule, they wished for his kingdom to be a great power, feared by everyone, and that “in his lifetime, great peace will be seen.”6 Within a month, in 1778, Voltaire (May 30) and Rousseau (August 2) both died, and it appeared that an era in the French Enlightenment had drawn to a close.

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Voltaire was already eighty-three when he returned to Paris in February of that year, after an absence of about twenty years. He was received with enormous enthusiasm by many admirers, who cheered him as the most important and famous man of the eighteenth century.7 Maria Theresa was also approaching her final days, and heavy clouds darkened her life. From her point of view, Friedrich II represented everything that outraged her; she thought he was godless, a bully, contemptuous of the truth, and treacherous. From her palace in Vienna, she wrote to her daughter Marie Antoinette in Paris saying that the future looked dark and they were extremely exposed to the aggression of Friedrich, the ruler who, for nearly forty years, had been destroying Europe with violence and despotism. She confessed to Joseph, her son, whose grip on power grew stronger even during his mother’s reign, that her powers were waning, her hearing was impaired, she no longer understood the new language of the younger generation, and her heart feared the abandonment of religion.8 Eleven days after her death on December 10, 1780, the Jewish community of Prague gathered for a memorial ceremony in the Maisel synagogue, in the presence of “many ministers and notables and also important and respected military men.” Rabbi Ezekiel Landau gave a long and emotional sermon “to eulogize and weep for the death of our great and righteous mistress, the queen and empress Maria Theresa.” This was not just another expression of loyalty to the state and to the Habsburg dynasty and not only an opportunity to greet the new ruler, Joseph II, and expect that he would be gracious to his Jewish subjects. It was also the sincere eulogy of a rabbi who could identify with the late queen’s conservative values and religious devotion and could perhaps find in them a counterbalance to her hostile policies, the peak of which was, as noted, the expulsion of the Jews in the 1740s. Landau did not conceal his admiration for “a woman who ruled several great states with such good government. . . . It would not be believed that all of this was done by a woman for forty-one years. Thus it is worthy to call her a woman of valor and a glorious crown to all the countries.” There was no doubt that God had chosen her and extended His Providence over her. She was worthy of all praise because of her contempt for entertainments and hedonism: “She was modest and ascetic and set herself apart from all the gratifications and physical appetites for many years. She did not sit in the company of gamblers and did not listen to songs and music, and she did not attend comedies and operas.” The only consolation is in the joy that the successor is “her great and mighty, wise and righteous son, more valuable than gold and all the gems, the emperor, his highness, Joseph.” The ceremony in the Prague synagogue ended like the one in France, with blessings for the

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king and shouts of “Long live our lord the emperor Joseph II forever, amen.” In his study of Landau’s eulogy, Marc Saperstein wondered how a queen who had persecuted the Jews so harshly could have earned such marvelous praise. He saw the eulogy as an indication of the increased involvement of the major communities in Central and Western Europe in the state and as an expression of a feeling of closeness and identification with the rulers.9 Of course, the change in generations was gradual. For example, Friedrich II lived for six years after the death of Maria Theresa, and in Russia, Katherine II consolidated her rule and lived almost to the end of the century. However, in the 1770s, a new era began in the biography of the eighteenth century, an age of rebellions and revolutions, some of which were of lasting historical significance. Younger people, pioneers born in the fourth, fifth, and even the sixth decade of the century, arose to challenge autocratic monarchical rule, which demanded submissive loyalty, among other things. A popular insurrection against Katherine II was led by a former officer in the Russian army, Yemelyan Pugachev (1742–1775), and in her last years, Maria Theresa had to cope with the revolt of Bohemian peasants and conflict with Friedrich II (the War of the Bavarian Succession, 1778–1779), which was initiated against her will by her son, the young emperor. Joseph II, who was born in 1741, introduced a series of reforms in the spirit of toleration in the Austrian Empire, some of which continued policies of his mother, while others contradicted them. Lord George Gordon (1751–1793), an English aristocrat and member of Parliament, was only twenty-nine when he incited thousands in London in an unprecedented, violent insurrection (the Gordon Riots) in 1780. In his thirties, Thomas Paine (1737–1809) aroused public opinion with his radical writings against oppressive British rule in North America and against the monarchy in general. George Washington (also born in 1737) was the charismatic leader of the American patriots, and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia when he was only thirty-three. In Germany, Goethe, only twenty-four years old and a student of law, praised the pre-Romantic Sturm und Drang movement when he published his bestselling novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in 1774. His success in the states of Germany and abroad was dizzying. The story of unfulfilled love between Werther and Lotte, presented in an epistolary novel full of desire, grief, and torments—the hero weeps inconsolably because of his desolate future and ultimately takes his own life—aroused intense emotions. Following in the footsteps of Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), his friend from Strasburg and Weimar who taught that the goal of the individual and of nations was to be true to themselves. Inspired by Rousseau, whose last book, The Reveries of the Solitary

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Walker, began with “me, then, as if alone upon the earth, having neither brother, relative, friend, or society, but my own thoughts,” Goethe’s protagonist rebelled against the reason and erudition of the Enlightenment and proposed a new ideal of happiness and meaning. “I examine my own being, and find there a world,” Werther wrote, redefining the autonomous self of the eighteenth century in sentimental language as the inner world of the soul, giving free rein to emotions.10 When Sara Meyer, the daughter of a wealthy Berlin banking family (she was the great-granddaughter of Veitel Heine Epharim), was only thirteen years old, she received the gift of “the divine Werther” from a Jewish friend. She called it “the consolation for miserable loves.” She read it eagerly and underlined many passages in it, until her father discovered it. Moses Mendelssohn was summoned to her home. “He scolded her bitterly. How could I forget God and religion, and, what was even more ridiculous,” she reported many years later, was that he threw Goethe’s book out the window. This incident took place in 1776, showing that the Romantic revolution was, among other things, youthful rebellion, while the older generation underestimated or feared it. Among the Jews of Berlin, Meyer, who later was known as Sophie von Grotthuis (1763–1828) and was an admirer of Goethe, represented women from the economic and cultural elite who underwent radical integration in German society toward the end of the century.11

“Th e Spir it OF R EBELLION IS BECOM ING FA M I LI A R E V ERY W H ER E” Ferment against privilege, misery, and injustice intensified in Europe beginning in the 1770s in several locations at the same time. It fragmented the ancien régime, provoked riots and confrontations, motivated plans for reform, and aroused belief among the people of the time that they deserved a better future. For example, the weakening of the Jesuit order, which was regarded by the absolutist regimes as subversive of the centralized state, as a source of politic intrigue, and as excessively influential in education and the economy, peaked in 1773, when Pope Clement XIV ordered its dissolution. Formerly Cardinal Ganganelli, he had abolished accusations of ritual murder against the Jews, as noted above. Repression of the Jesuits was regarded in Europe as a blow to Roman Catholicism second only to the Reformation. Of course, without it occurring to her that her daughter would lose her life as a victim of revolution, in the summer of 1775, Maria Theresa wrote to her daughter Marie Antoinette: “This spirit of rebellion is becoming familiar everywhere; this is the consequence of our enlightened century.”12

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Abraham Trebitsch was a young student in the Prague yeshiva when panic seized the residents of the city. Thousands of Bohemian peasants rose up against the aristocratic landowners: “They destroyed some palaces and the fortresses of ministers and plundered and ransacked.” They also struck against the property of Jewish lessees and threatened to break into Prague. The Austrian army arrived to put down the peasant revolt, but meanwhile “troops marched through crossroads, all the roads were dangerous, and travel almost ceased.”13 The rebellion in Bohemia broke out in January 1775, in the midst of feverish efforts in Vienna, led by Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and senior governmental officials, to find a solution to the misery of the peasants by reducing the burden of taxation and mainly by restricting the oppressive feudal obligations of forced labor (robota) for the lords, the owners of the estates. Improvement of the lives of the peasants and making them subjects of the state, rather than of the landowners, were central goals of domestic policy. In late winter of 1775, the rebellion seemed to have gone out of control, until an army of about 40,000 managed to suppress it in the spring. An edict issued in the summer greatly limited the extent of forced labor, and Maria Theresa even instructed her advisors to plan for the complete liberation of the peasants. This initiative was blocked, but in 1781, Joseph II took the revolutionary step of ordering the abolition of what remained of serfdom.14 In the view of the rabbi of Prague, the peasant rebellion dealt a severe blow to the existing and proper order, whose consequences went far beyond the immediate threat to his city. He did not envision the solution of agrarian reform, nor did he express concern for the fate of the serfs, oppressed by the exploitative nobility. Rather, he sounded a warning from the conservative point of view, with the dread of a defender of the old order against the danger of disrupting stability, which was inherent in the spirit of liberty. In a sermon given on Shabbat Hagadol, before Passover in 1775, Ezekiel Landau gave thanks for deliverance (“Blessed be the Lord, that He did not make us prey in their teeth”) and emphasized that the fate of the Jews depended on the grace of the “ministers.” He also placed the rebellion “of the peasants of Bohemia” in the broad context of the outbreak of the great heresy against the rule of God over human life. Like Maria Theresa, he found a direct connection between the enlightened eighteenth century and the spirit of rebellion. He discerned the developments of modern history with concern and with great accuracy as an expression of the aspiration to autonomy and liberation from authority and of belief that the world proceeded according to the laws of nature and that the course of history was not dictated by heaven. In his opinion, the religious crisis had also reached “the Hebrew fold,” and voices against the

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authority of the Torah and faith in Providence were increasing. “The whole rebellion of the peasants against their masters,” Landau said to the audience in the Prague synagogue, was a warning from heaven to make people aware of the anarchic consequences of the new world, which had freed itself from authority, was contemptuous of the government, rejected class structure, and endangered everything, enabling the individual to achieve independence and free choice. Landau explained that “when the peasants rise against us, and everyone can choose according to his free will,” the danger was even greater than “the clamor of war.” An army was usually restricted by the duties of discipline and the chain of command. Soldiers did not have a free hand. Even the king was limited “by the power of supervision on him from Above.” However, a popular insurrection such as this broke every boundary; as the Bohemian rebels declared, “Let every man do as he pleases to take plunder and raid for booty.” When “the world goes its own way, and there is no law-officer or governor or supervisor, and everything is according to nature,” destructive forces were set free, and “great danger” was aroused. This was one of the clearest expressions articulated by a Jewish leader, who observed the beginning of the age of revolutions with panic and consternation, when, to the distress of his heart, “everyone is his own master.”15 A year earlier, in the eastern reaches of the Russian Empire, an extensive revolt of peasants, Cossacks, and nomadic tribes had been put down. The leader of the rebellion, a Don Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev, deserted from the army and harbored resentment against his aristocratic Russian commanders. Opposition to increasing intervention of the government, to oppressive taxation, to military conscription, and to the oppressive aristocracy nourished popular protest. He represented himself to the rebels who followed him as a legitimate claimant to the throne—Peter III, the czar who had been Katherine’s husband more than a decade ago and who had been deposed and (allegedly) murdered to pave the way for the czarina. Belief that Pugachev was the alternative czar, who had escaped Katherine and remained alive, and that he would be the great liberator of the masses inspired the rebels with a fighting spirit. Before people in the court of Katherine the Great became aware of the extent of the danger and sent a large military force to combat the rebels, stop the murderous campaign against landowners and officials, and capture their leader, in 1773 and 1774, the rebels captured extensive territories between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. The Pugachev Rebellion was a sign to Katherine that her reign might be endangered, and, in the context of the period, it demonstrated once again the power of the call for freedom to arouse the masses.16 A financial and administrative crisis affected France until the years of the revolution. Reform efforts on the part of the royal government failed because

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of the opposition of the privileged classes. Immediately after Louis XVI rose to the throne in Versailles in 1774, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), a liberal economist and a member of the enlightened republic, was appointed minister of finance for the purpose of producing additional revenue without making the burden of taxation more oppressive and taking on more loans. A series of edicts were issued in the spirit of freedom from traditional privileges and rigid restrictions. Owners of property and land were called on to contribute more than in the past to the state’s revenues, and efforts were made to relieve the weakest members of society. One of the relatively radical and controversial decrees ordered a deep reform in the obligation to perform forced public labor (the Corvée), mainly in paving roads. This edict combined rational economic theory with humanistic concern and protest against the injustice suffered by the penniless peasants, calling for replacing forced labor with a tax that was to be paid by the landowners. Turgot knew, as he took up his position, that he would have to cope with many enemies who would not give up their privileges. Indeed, pressure on the king led to his dismissal after two years, and the reforms were blocked.17 Knowledge that the queen’s dislike for him had led to her intervention and brought about his dismissal perturbed Maria Theresa. She warned her daughter against government intrigues and expressed sorrow at the failure of such a talented minister, with so much public prestige.18 However, a greater cause for concern, which vexed the royal courts of Vienna and Versailles, was the royal couple’s bed chamber. It was widely known that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had not had full sexual relations during the seven years since their marriage, and this was a political problem, as no successor to the throne of France was on the horizon. In 1777, the Austrian emperor, Joseph II, traveled there and reported to his brother Leopold, the duke of Tuscany, that “indeed, the condition of the king is truly strange, and he is only two-thirds a husband.” An intimate conversation that he held with Louis XVI apparently led to a solution, and the queen quickly and enthusiastically reported the news to her mother: the king “is doing his duty with great frequency like a true husband.” When news of her pregnancy was publicized, the Jews in the communities of the eastern part of the country prayed for an easy and successful pregnancy and wished her as little suffering and pain as possible during the birth, freeing the queen from the curse of Eve.19 In the last months of her life, Maria Theresa shared her thoughts with her daughter about the instability that had also struck England, reiterating her conservative worldview and her constant fear of revolutions. She warned against what liberty was liable to bring about: “Especially after the terrible riot, without example in a civilized country… There it is, that liberty so often praised, that

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unique way of legislation! Without religion, without morality, nothing lasts.”20 Alongside the uprisings in Russia and Bohemia, violent and destructive riots also took place in the streets of London. In Parliament, Gordon protested in the name of the Protestants against legislation that granted concessions to the Catholics, and in June 1789, he managed to arouse tens of thousands of angry protesters. At least one of these was a Jew, Samuel Solomon, who was among those executed for rebellion. The Gordon Riots rapidly turned into a popular rebellion against the government and the oppression of the lower classes. The burning of the prison at Newgate on July 6 became a symbol of the rebellion. On the following day, Black Wednesday, three hundred people were killed before the army put down the riots, and Gordon was arrested for treason. Twelve years after the Wilkes Riots, the people of the time felt they were experiencing a powerful and exceptional revolutionary event, which had nearly gone out of control and was basically the outbreak of class conflict.21 At the time of the Gordon Riots, England was confronted with a far more severe challenge. The war to suppress the North American revolution had entered its sixth year, and failure already loomed on the horizon. The escalating tensions between the American patriots and the British regime, which, as noted, began with the Boston Massacre, peaked about three years later, on December 16, 1773, with the Boston Tea Party, a symbolic protest against the tax on tea: disguised as Indians, protesters threw crates of tea into the water from ships anchored in the harbor. George II was determined to impose his authority over the empire. The punitory measures taken by his government and the reinforcement of the army in the area led to confrontations and an armed struggle of increasing extent. One of the best informed Jews on the first events in the American War of Independence, which began in the spring of 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord, was apparently Raphael Chaim Isaac Karigal, a Sephardic rabbi who was born in Hebron and served in the Nidhe Israel congregation in the Caribbean island of Barbados. Karigal had gone to Newport, Rhode Island, two years previously as an emissary from the Land of Israel. There he made friends with Christian scholar and Hebraist Ezra Stiles. With great enthusiasm and intense expectation for victory over tyranny, Stiles reported to Karigal that Great Britain and her colonies in North America were engaged in an exceptional civil war that was raging unrestrained. His letter of July 7, 1775, truly reads like a military report. Stiles described the battles in the Boston area, sought to be precise in describing the extent of the forces and the number of casualties on each side, and added a sketch of the situation on the sites of the British army and the American fighters. He wrote in particular about the bloody battle of

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Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775). Although the British strove to present it as a victory, according to information in his possession, about a thousand British soldiers were killed, and in its wake, in fact, an American army arose, fervent with high motivation to fight for liberty. Giving the events theological significance, the Christian Hebraist explained to the rabbi from the Land of Israel that the spirit of the patriotic army, whose head, appointed by the Continental Congress, was George Washington, was the spirit of the Jewish people in the days of “Nehemiah, the patriot,” who believed that “God will fight for us.” Although we anticipate another blood-soaked war, he said, we trust that Providence will stand by us.22 A year later, merchant Jonas Phillips (the American name of Yona Ben Feibush, 1736–1803, who had immigrated from Poland with his family) tried to report to Europe about the revolution that was taking place in America and even to send a copy of the Declaration of Independence. In a Yiddish letter that he sent from Philadelphia to his business partner, Gumpel Samson, of Amsterdam (July 28, 1776), he complained about the problems of international trade and added a list of merchandise (such as medicines, cloth, pins and needles, blankets, and socks) that would make a great profit in America. As a resident of the city that had played such a central role in the revolution, Phillips added his commentary: “The war will bring it about that all of England will go bankrupt,” because the rebel forces outnumbered the British, and there was no turning back on the political process of liberation. “The Americans have already made themselves free like the states of Holland. I am inclosing the Declaration of Independence of the entire country. How things will end, only God knows.”23 The letter and the printed copy of the Declaration of Independence were seized by the British and never reached their addressee, but it remains one of the voices that testify to the deep awareness of the revolutionary significance of the events. Jews were found on both sides of the barricades. In New York, cantor Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745–1816) led the congregation during a day of fasting and prayer “to turn away the wrath and fury from North America” and for peace (May 17, 1776), while in London, Ashkenazim and Sephardim gathered in their synagogues to pray for British success (December 13, 1776). Within the small Jewish community, which then numbered about 2,500 immigrants from Europe and some who were born in the colonies, there were some Tories who supported the empire, but the vast majority demonstrated American patriotism in various ways and identified themselves as Whigs, who hoped for the victory of the revolution. Most of the Jews of New York left for “exile” in Stratford, Connecticut, and Philadelphia soon after the British conquest, demonstrating their allegiance to the rebelling side. Haym Salomon (1740–1785), who immigrated

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from Leszno, Poland, played a central role in financing the colonial army with loans. As a broker, he dealt in letters of credit, and brothers Michael and Bernard Gratz, from Silesia, were suppliers of military equipment. At the beginning of the war, the British governor of Georgia reported from Savannah that the behavior of the locals was despicable. One of them—Sheftall, a Jew—was the head of what was called a local council, which was instructing the captains of vessels to sail on without offloading their cargo. Mordecai Sheftall (1735–1797) was, indeed, one of the Jewish officers who took an active part in combat and even was taken prisoner. The governor, who ultimately took Savannah, wished to forbid the Jews from returning to the city, as they were violent rebels who persecuted the loyal subjects of the king. Jewish loyalty to the revolutionaries was not self-evident. Moses Michael Hays (1739–1805) of Newport was insulted when, a week after the Declaration of Independence, he was asked to sign an oath of support that included the phrase “upon the true faith of a Christian.” He protested that he had always expressed his sentiments for America and acknowledged the justice of its war. There was no truth to what his enemies said of him, and, he added, the revolutionary institutions and legislatures must give attention to the status of the Jews. Another Loyalist, Isaac Hart, was suspected of supporting Britain. He fled from Newport to Long Island, where he was killed as a traitor. There was no doubt about the patriotism of statesman and warrior Francis Salvador (1747–1776). He was a young immigrant from an aristocratic Portuguese family in London. He was twice elected to the Continental Congress from South Carolina and also took part in drafting the constitution of that colony. At the age of only twenty-nine, less than a month after the Declaration of Independence was approved, he was shot and killed after being cruelly scalped on August 1, 1776, in a battle against Indians who supported Britain.24 Salvador’s story—he was the first Jewish casualty in the war for independence—played a central role for generations as proof of absolute loyalty. Jonathan Sarna has claimed that the proud descriptions of the Jewish contribution to the American Revolution were somewhat exaggerated, as they sought to justify the presence of Jews in the United States and to refute the accusations of anti-Semites, who doubted their loyalty. Nevertheless, one cannot doubt the identification that was expressed during the war, as exemplified by the protest of “a true American and wholehearted Jew,” the unprecedented self-definition of an anonymous Jew from Charleston who angrily protested the claim that Jews were shirking in the defense of Georgia in a letter to a newspaper in South Carolina (December 2, 1778). This was untrue, he wrote, because the Jews now shared in the battle with the other citizens, their brethren, in doing what every true American should do.25

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K a r iga l a n d Sti l e s in th e Tou ro S y nagogu e a n d A zu l a i in th e Pa l ace at V er sa i ll e s About two years before the outbreak of the war in America, before the reading of the Torah on Shavuot of 5533 (May 28, 1773), Karigal gave a sermon in Ladino in the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. In the audience of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Stiles, a Puritan minister, sat and tried to understand. This was an emotional experience for him, and he wrote in his diary that the rabbi preached for forty-seven minutes in Spanish mixed with Hebrew, that his gestures were dignified and Oriental, and that he wore spectacles during the entire sermon and occasionally looked down, as if he were reading written notes. He wore a crimson cloak, a green vest of Damascus silk, and a fur hat. Within a short time, the sermon was translated into English by wealthy lay leader Aaron Lopez and was printed.26 The sermon in Newport was one of the high points of the extended journey to the New World of the indefatigable Sephardic emissary from Hebron. He spent most of his life in daring voyages by sea and land, visiting dozens of cities while his family remained behind. Karigal went to Egypt, the Middle East, and the Balkans when he was only twenty-two, and three years later, he went on a more ambitious trip that led him to Italy, Bohemia, Germany, France, Holland, and England. In 1761, Karigal reached the New World for the first time, serving for a while as the rabbi of the Dutch colony of Curaçao. He then returned to Europe and visited, among other places, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Livorno. In 1768, he left Hebron for a nine-year voyage, from which he never returned home. First he spent two and a half years in Paris and London. He then went to the English colony of Jamaica and onward to Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Surinam, and then Barbados, where he died in 1777 at the age of only forty-five. His short but very extensive acquaintance with the colonies and the Jews who inhabited them was unique. The ocean voyages were not easy, and more than once he nearly despaired and wished to return home, as he reported in a letter he sent to Lopez from Surinam. He had experienced tempests, thunder and lightning storms, diseases, and shortages of food and drink. “I would have been better off as a cook in your kitchen than subjecting myself to such dangers,” he complained to the man who had apparently tempted him to go on to the Caribbean from New England to serve as a rabbi.27 Information about Karigal’s journeys is not found in his own travel journal or memoirs, but in Stiles’s diaries. Stiles interrogated him at length and recorded a brief account of his life from their conversation. During the months of Karigal’s stay in Newport, a warm friendship developed between them, which

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can be seen as parallel to the close connection between their contemporaries in Berlin, Mendelssohn and Lessing. Karigal visited Stiles almost every afternoon and evening, got to know his family well, and observed his diligence in improving his command of Hebrew. He told Stiles about life in the Land of Israel, answered questions about the language and commentary on the Torah, and discussed theological issues with him. They met in the synagogue, in the library, and even in church, where the rabbi went to hear a sermon by a Christian minister for the first time in his life. Stiles admired his Jewish friend and was impressed by the exoticism of the man whose figure and dress were “Turkish.” He saw him as an authentic representative of the rabbinical elite and a reliable source of deep acquaintance with Judaism. As a Hebraist, Stiles’s curiosity was boundless. He wanted to know about Kabbalah, about customs, about commandments such as Levirate Marriage, about the Ten Lost Tribes, and mainly about messianic hopes. Stiles wrote in his diary that he implored Karigal to tell him when, in his opinion, the messiah would come. He asked him whether the rabbis of his day had particular reasons for expecting the immediate advent of the messiah, and Karigal answered that, indeed, the time had come, but he added that this would only happen when all the nations were at war and an age of general chaos prevailed in the world. However, such a situation was no more evident at present than at other times. Stiles presented the calculations of a German rabbi who had determined that the messiah would come in 1783, but Karigal demurred and suggested that one shouldn’t rely on that.28 When Karigal left Newport, the two men corresponded cordially in English and Hebrew, combining intimate personal conversation with interreligious dialogue. Karigal complained about his difficulties in adapting to life in Barbados and about the sermons he gave there, and Stiles told him about his son’s progress in his studies, grieved for the loss of his beloved wife, and also reported, as we have seen, about the early stages of the War of Independence. Four years after his friend’s death, Stiles was appointed the president of Yale college, where he had a portrait of Karigal exhibited. Karigal began his sermon in Newport with a quotation from the Babylonian Talmud: “My son, if there arise within thee an evil desire, the best remedy you can get to subdue it, is to proceed directly with it to the sacred colleges.” He immediately stated its purpose: conservative defense of the religious tradition and faith against a series of modern threats. In his sea chest, he brought with him to the New World the apprehension that was then gripping the rabbinic elite in Europe. In this foundational sermon, the first to be printed in English, the Sephardi rabbi internalized the feeling of danger that had also gripped Emden in Altona and Landau in Prague. Like Moshe Hagiz in the beginning of the

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century and H.aim Yosef David Azulai in midcentury, he took upon himself, as an emissary from the Holy Land, the mission of supervising and preserving the religion. Karigal told his audience of merchants that a man’s supreme duty is, of course, to make a living and earn his bread. Hence, those who sail in ships risk their lives as they navigate through stormy waves and winds. However, on the holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah, one must acknowledge that the true purpose of life and the guarantee of man’s existence in this world and the next is to obey the commandments of the religion, and true faith recognizes every sorrow and disaster as punishment from heaven for negligence in worshiping God. Like Landau in Prague, Karigal, too, identified the phenomenon of individual autonomy as the root of all evil. In our day, “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25). Everyone trusts in his own understanding and wisdom and rules on religion for himself. Many look on the tradition with contempt, and others criticize and deny it. Especially dangerous, he noted, are those who try to explain the religion only by means of reason and argue that commandments that have lost their justification are no longer obligatory. Halakha is eternal, he preached with ardor, and the commandments must be observed because they were given by God in revelation and not because they are sensible. Perhaps when he was in Amsterdam or London, he witnessed the processes of secularization and was exposed to new world views, or perhaps his sermon drew on his visit to New York. Karigal might also have been surprised to see Jews who were “not like those we have in Europe and Germany, who can be identified by their beards and clothing,” as described by German mercenary Johann Conrad Döhla. In America, Döhla reported, they dress like the other citizens; they shave, eat pork, and marry Christians, and the women are fashionable in dress and hairstyle, like women of other religions.29 Matthias Lehman was correct in interpreting the meaning of the Newport sermon as decidedly conservative. It was a vigorous and clear defense of the tradition, whose sole authoritative interpreters are the rabbis. In this respect, he represented a new Sephardi orthodoxy, whose similarity to the Ashkenazi Torah elite indicated, among other things, “the trans-national, even global interconnectedness of the eighteenth-century Jewish world.”30 The fissures in the traditional world were evident during the 1770s in the voyages of Jews like Karigal, and paths to a new world were marked out. In his second journey (1772–1778), Azulai, another emissary from the Land of Israel, moved freely within networks of rabbis, preachers, and lay leaders in the Ottoman Empire and in Southern and Western Europe. As an enthusiastic and involved tourist, he repeatedly crossed the boundaries between the Jewish and non-Jewish realms. In Italy, France, and Holland, he encountered closely

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and always with surprise the new challenges of skepticism, permissiveness, and the weakening of religious authority. Azulai’s second mission to the cities of Europe, like that of Karigal, was intended to raise money for the Jews of Hebron. It lasted for six years and in effect became emigration from the Land of Israel, since in the end he settled in Livorno.31 News reached him of instability in various places in the world, influencing his itinerary and affecting the size of contributions. When he traveled from Hebron to Egypt, he learned that the rebellion of Ali Bey al-Kabir (1728–1773) against Ottoman rule had been suppressed. Azulai condemned Ali Bey as an “adversary and enemy” (echoing Esther’s words about Haman) who had undermined order in the Middle East and was responsible for the death of many people, including prominent Jews in Egypt. In a journal entry (May 7, 1773), he shared in the imperial government’s sigh of relief; there was “joy and singing with harvest happiness. . . . So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord” (Judg. 5:31).32 His first destination was Italy, but during the war between Russia and the Ottomans (1768–1774), it was dangerous to sail, because Russian battleships were patrolling the Mediterranean: “I was afraid to journal because of the Muscovites, between Alexandria and Livorno.” He considered trying to obtain a passport from the Austrian consul but admitted that it would be hard to conceal his identity as an Ottoman subject, even if he proved that his daughter was living in Livorno, “because my costume and my language bear witness that I am Levantine.”33 When the emissary from Hebron visited Holland, he learned about the events in America (“The troubles of the English are many, and they are attacked by wars with the Americans, who rebelled against them”). In Amsterdam, on March 9, 1778, he met Jewish businessmen who were seized with apprehension because of the crisis in international trade and on the English stock exchange, in which they had invested. “Everything is in deep decline, and London is in a panic because of the war against the American rebels,” and the Jews there decreased their support of the Jews of the Land of Israel.34 In Paris, wealthy Jewish leader Abraham Vidal shared his concern with Azulai regarding Marie Antoinette and the continuation of the dynasty, asking him “to pray for the queen to become pregnant.” Azulai believed in the power of prayer and had told him about other women who had become pregnant and given birth with ease by virtue of his amulets and blessings. He wrote with satisfaction in his journal (Saturday night, July 4, 1778), just a month and a half after the official announcement of her pregnancy in Versailles, that he had succeeded. One of his friends in France was impressed with his powers: “She has been pregnant for four months, and Monsieur Fabri told me that my prayer had borne fruit, and I thought, not with my righteousness but by virtue of my ancestors.”35 His appearance as a holy

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figure gained him special admiration. For example, in Tunis, “I had especial honor so that several pregnant women came to the rich man’s house, and they wanted to see me, and they stood at the windows . . . and I used to walk in the courtyard there on the Sabbath with the rich man, and I felt the women behind me taking the hems of my garment from the back with pleasure and lightness and kissing them.” In Narbonne, “retinue after retinue came to see me and did me great honor.” In The Hague, he was greeted by “the leader Rabbi Tuvia Boaz, who did me great honor.” As he had during his trip of the 1750s, Azulai expected honor and hospitality everywhere. Therefore, he was disappointed and deeply insulted when no one invited him to the Seder in Amsterdam in 1778: “I was used to Italy, where many fought over where I would eat, and here there is ‘no voice and no response’ [1 Kings 18:29], not even with a hint.”36 The documentation of his voyage is autobiographical, and central to it are the self and the many challenges that arose in his path, his experiences, and his pain. On the way to Ancona, his carriage overturned, and he only escaped injury by a miracle (“my servant and I fell, and the coach fell on us, and the horses, and we were in danger, thank God, that we immediately got up, unscathed”). In Carpentras, in southern France, “we entered the coach, and the gentiles did wicked things, with shouts and insults, throwing slices of fruit into the coach.” Every time they passed through a customs station, Azulai was nervous that the agents would make a thorough search of his baggage. Toothaches, upset stomachs, and various diseases caused him much suffering, as in Ferrara, when “I was ‘sullen and angry’ [1 Kings 21:4], and in the morning I could not get up, and I vomited and had diarrhea and fever and I was in distress all day long.” At the start of his journey, a letter from Livorno reached Tunis, telling him that his wife had died about a year earlier. His grief was great: “The bride of my youth, righteous and with a woman’s wisdom, God-fearing . . . the delight of my eyes and the beauty of my house, mistress Rachel, who reposes in heaven, and the world was dark for me.” So that he wouldn’t be married immediately to a local woman, he mourned in secret but sank into depression, as happened more than once during the journey: “I was ill with melancholy.” However, there were also pleasant moments, when he tasted “kinds of sweets” with his hosts and drank hot chocolate, or a few days of repose in the summer of 1778 in Lyons, when he was sent to the baths to be cured of an annoying skin disease. He sat in a warm bath, wrapped himself in sheets and warm towels, and reported on the delights of the place; outside, “a coffee house was installed, and everyone sent to have coffee or lemonade brought, or whatever he wished, and everything was arranged in an orderly way with great cleanliness.” It was no wonder the treatment was a success, “and I immediately saw an improvement.”37

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On his second voyage, Azulai deepened his acquaintance with Europe as a tourist with unbounded curiosity. Again and again he expressed his enthusiasm with the words “a wonder!” in response to works of art, palaces and cathedrals, exotic trees brought from the New World, well-tended parks, ornamental pools and fountains, collections of rare plants, stuffed animals, minerals, and rich libraries. Azulai admired urban development in cities where there was lively commerce and where the streets were wide enough to allow free and rapid passage of carriages. Seeing technological and scientific achievements—constant innovation that improved and refined human life—he shared the consciousness of progress. In Mantua, he visited the sixteenth-century Palazzo del Te and was impressed by the special acoustics of the Sala dei Giganti (the hall of the giants), a tourist attraction, the effect of which was attained by precise engineering: “A hall of echoes there is made with matimatiqa, so that if a person stands in one corner diagonally opposite to someone in another corner, who speaks with an absolute whisper, they hear one another.” Later, Azulai observed the process of manufacturing paper: “I went to a paper factory, and I saw the force of the flow of water, and with its power hammers strike on rags for several hours, until they are very crushed, and they place everything in a pool of water with lime.” In Verona, he was impressed by the ancient Roman arena where gladiators once fought; it had 72,000 seats “on steps around and around.” In Livorno, he strolled through a labyrinth that reminded him of Luzzatto’s book of ethics: “It is a garden of mazes, of which [the author of] The Path of the Righteous wrote, and in this garden there are eighty short paths that keep confusing one.” In Pisa, Azulai did not miss the leaning tower or the bronze doors of the cathedral, and in Livorno, he saw an elephant for the first time in his life and described it in detail: “it was nine years old and its height and thickness were greater than a camel, and they said he would grow up to thirty years and live longer than a hundred years, and it bears grudges, and its eyes are very small, and its ears are very broad, and its nose is three cubits long, and it uses its snout for eating and drinking”. With excitement, he recited the blessing, “In the name of the Kingdom, blessed is He who changes [His creatures].” He reached Venice at the end of 1776, and it made a great impression on him, just as it had on the young tourist Abraham Levi about half a century earlier. He strolled around Piazza San Marco and rode on the canals under the bridges in gondolas, he climbed the campanile, from which he viewed the city and the sea, and he saw the famous bronze horses and the column with the statue of the winged lion. He also visited the Hebrew printing house founded in the sixteenth century. In Modena, he was enthusiastic about Kabbalistic works that he discovered in the

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library, but no less than he was about his visit to the duke’s palace and cabinet, where he saw peacocks (“a marvel”) and a parrot (“small and green”).38 The pages of his travel diary in Italy and later in Holland were crammed with impressions, but Azulai had the most powerful experience in Paris, where he arrived in December 1777. “This is the city of Paris, the metropolis of France, a great city they said was fifteen miles in circumference.” He described his first impressions: “The markets and the avenues are wide, so that two carriages can pass with space for people on the sides.” Azulai learned that fifty thousand carriages rode in it, that the number of inhabitants was more than a million, and that not even a whole day was enough to circle it on foot. The city’s treasures of knowledge were preserved in libraries and studied in the university. The tourist was especially impressed by the pace of life in the great city—the constant motion, the great abundance, the high cost of living, and even the open and regulated presence of prostitution: The River Seine is there, providing its water, and there is a long, wide bridge called “pont neuf,” and feet are not absent from that bridge all day and all night . . . and they said that there was no moment in the twenty-four hours of the day and night when a white horse, a priest, or a whore are absent from that bridge. The city is beautiful, and everything is in it, except everything is expensive, though prostitution is cheap, and public, and they said that there are thirty thousand wanton prostitutes listed in registers, aside from thousands who are not registered and available to anyone.39

Like Karigal, Azulai also attracted quite a few curious Christians from the aristocracy and among the learned, who sought him out. Hardly had two days passed since his arrival in Paris when he was visited by “Monsieur [Jean Antoine] Fabre [1748–1834], a wise gentile from the Academy of Sciences,” who took Azulai under his wing. Fabre was an expert in mechanics who took an interest in Azulai because “he investigated the sciences and practical Kabbalah.” He treated Azulai cordially, hosted him in his home, and accompanied him on a visit to the library. Their friendship led to one of the peaks of Azulai’s journey as a tourist in Europe. One winter day (January 6, 1778), when the ground was covered with snow, Fabre invited Azulai, the tourist, and a local scholar, Mordecai Ventura, on a trip together to Versailles. The visit made a huge impression on Azulai, who tried to remember every single detail: “We entered a beautiful and splendid room with many columns covered with gold on both sides and on them were large torches, and the ceiling was painted and appeared to be carved, and it is the gallery, and lords stand there, and we went through many rooms, and royal chambers, and we entered the council chamber.” The visitors did not come

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only to tour and be impressed by the splendor of the palace, but also to witness a royal audience. “After a short time great lords passed, including the king’s brother,” Azulai reported with excitement, “and then the king passed by with great lords and I recited the blessing for seeing a king.” Not surprisingly, Louis XVI noticed Azulai, whose Oriental costume stood out among the dozens of men in wigs, and he wished to find out who he was. “And soon the king came,” Azulai continued in his journal, “and a lord came and said to monsieur Fabre, who was at my side, that the king asked what country I was the ambassador of, and he answered that he was not an ambassador, only that he was from Egypt and come out of curiosity.” It is impossible to know whether Fabre intentionally concealed Azulai’s Jewish identity, but he was certainly correct in presenting him as a curious tourist from the East. Azulai himself summed up his visit to Versailles, his proximity to the king of France, and the friendship that was showered on him by high-ranking Christians with a prayer of thanksgiving: “Wondrous praise to the blessed Lord who magnified His name, and I was only a tiny vessel of all of His grace.”40 As in his first trip, Azulai traced his path along the map of the Jewish world. His criteria for ranking the cities and Jewish communities that he visited derived from the manners and conduct he had acquired in Europe, admiration for what was beautiful and refined, and awareness of the importance of tolerance and freedom. France earned high marks with him because “the French are courteous and happy, and they treat us with honor and love.” In Paris, for example, “the Jews are in tranquility, and there are many Ashkenazim and many Portuguese from Bordeaux and Bayonne and many from Avignon.” In Tunis, he did not conceal his revulsion from the lack of “courtesy” among his hosts, and he reported that “in the matter of their foods, it was their custom that all the tables were full of cooked food and their smell wafted up excessively and they eat with their hands and their feet, and all their palms are full of greasiness.” Azulai did not restrain himself and reprimanded them, admitting how impatient he was to leave and arrive in Livorno, “full of courtesy and the most subtle politics.” Like many others before him who found Amsterdam to be the most favorable city for the Jews, Azulai was impressed by its advantages, especially when he observed the merry and rowdy processions on Purim in 5538 (1778), “as though the city was theirs, and with great publicity in the streets of the city.” He regarded the freedom enjoyed by the Jews of Amsterdam as unprecedented, and he even considered, with some concern, the possibility that they had transgressed a certain boundary in exploiting tolerance: “And the city is liberty, and they take too much, as if they were the rulers and kings of the country, a wondrous thing.”41

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Seeing the proliferation of religious permissiveness and skepticism about faith, to his regret, he discovered freedom from religious discipline as well. His testimony from the years of his second trip complements the picture that emerged in parallel in the sermons of the rabbis of the time, like Emden’s “Ornament of Fine Gold” or the panicked, critical work A New World.42 In Bordeaux, the port city, which was flourishing because of colonial trade, wealthy Portuguese Jews lived as aristocrats in every respect. There Azulai discovered a “nest of heretics”, whose existence he had not suspected on his first visit more than twenty years earlier. He reported, “Lay leaders and eminent Sephardim came, and I gave them an angry look, and then the conversation was drawn to philosophical questions, verging on heresy.” For example, he was forced to meet “Ya’aqov Aziodo, wise in wickedness, and his two heretic sons, who violate the Sabbath in public. I was somewhat ill at ease with him, and I found ways to make him leave.” He was taken to the home of “Ya’aqov Raphael, who had slept with a noble woman, who had given birth to a son, and they sent him to Amsterdam and had him circumcised, and he [Raphael] is a great philosopher, and he asked me some things about religion and some investigations.” In 1755, he still trusted the kashrut in the home of Benjamin Gradis, but in his encounter with the heads of the Gradis family, who were suppliers to the French government and slave merchants, he was more suspicious. In November 1777, he visited the country estate of Abraham Gradis (1695–1780), taking note of his economic power and the importance of his closeness to the monarchy, but he defined him as one of the extremists among the heretics: “He is one of the greatest heretics, who do not believe in the Oral Law and who eat forbidden foods in public.” The curriculum in the community’s religious school was influenced by the Gradis family. Arithmetic and French were added, and study of the Bible was based on the text alone, without commentaries. Azulai, who was invited to a public examination, was very surprised: “For our many sins, in the Jewish school, they study only Bible. They do not want Rashi to be studied, since he teaches rabbinic Midrashim and the interpretations of our rabbis of blessed memory, and they also do not want Maimonides—woe to the eyes that have seen this. May their sins cease.” With helpless acceptance of the situation, Azulai distinguished between his frustrated anger against the great heretics and sinners and his admiration for their financial success, their splendid way of life, “and the many pleasures of this world,” which attracted him.43 Great perplexity awaited him in Jewish Paris, when he learned that even a member of the rabbinical elite, his friend Mordecai Tama, who also had come from the Land of Israel and was the rabbi of the Jews of Avignon, was known to be a skeptic, and rumors about him were extremely troubling. He was even

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worse than those who denied the Oral Law, because “he is unworthy . . . because he read the books of Voltaire, and he does not believe in anything, and the like.”44 In the community of The Hague, he still tried to reprimand the leaders for their grave sins. “First I told the chief lay leader, who has two gentile women in his home, and he is suspect of misconduct with them,” Azulai reported. “I told a second lay leader about it, and to all of them, that I want to save my soul, for they are mired in the depths of filth, for notorious transgressions.” However, he already had the feeling he was merely doing his duty as a religious supervisor without laboring under any delusion about the chance they might pay heed to him.45 As an eyewitness to secularization among the communities of Western Europe, Azulai raged with frustration and disappointment. It was hard for him to bear the freedom that the Jews of France, Italy, and Holland permitted themselves as they turned their backs on the prohibitions of the religion. Increasingly he realized that he couldn’t stand in the way of the emerging trend, as he was repeatedly surprised by the self-assurance and pride of the religious skeptics, the fashionable Jews who sinned against kashrut, failed to observe the Sabbath, and committed adultery, and his heart was broken. He responded to Mordecai Tama’s heresy with pain: “And in truth I was very sorry about it . . . and if it is true, may God lead him to full repentance.” All Azulai could do was to mourn in sorrow about the crisis in religion and condemn the sexual libertinism that broke down the boundaries between Jews and Christians: “My ears ring upon hearing it, I am very sad for the seed of Israel, who are deeply immersed in the deep mire of gentile women.”46

To Be Sepa r ated from “Th e L a n d of I m pu r it y ”: H a si di m in Ti ber i a s a n d Sa fed On Sunday, September 7, 1777, Azulai left the community of Montpellier in southern France, disappointed by the meager contribution he had received for the Jews of the Land of Israel. He also left behind the warning he had sounded to “a few individuals” not to neglect the laws of observing the Sabbath.47 Precisely on that day (5 Elul, 5537), three hundred Jews from Poland landed on the shores of the Land of Israel, probably in Acre, exhausted after a long journey, including a weeklong sea voyage from Istanbul, and continued with a donkey caravan to Safed. The group was led by three Hasidic figures from White Russia: Menah.em Mendel of Vitebsk, Abraham of Kalisk, and Yisrael of Polotsk (1733–1788). The expedition had attracted attention. The Polish government in Warsaw issued instructions to restrict what seemed to be the flow of Jews to

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Jerusalem and to stop them at the border, fearing a considerable loss of income from taxes. Indeed, this was an emigration of families for the purpose of settling in the Land of Israel. The relatively small group of Hasidic travelers was joined by many other poor Jews from Volhynia and Podolia, and it was remembered for generations as “the great immigration of the Hasidim,” or as the immigration of the maggid of Międzyrzec’s disciples, a further landmark in the movement of religious renewal in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.48 In a letter from Safed in the winter of 1778, Abraham of Kalisk wrote to a circle of Hasidim in Poland: “We found the city tranquil and quiet from the wars of the kings of Canaan with one another.” He expressed hope that, despite the difficulties and want, they would adjust to the conditions in the country, “and with the passage of time we are learning each other’s language, and it is possible to engage in every trade.”49 The processes of secularization in the communities of Europe that had alarmed Azulai had not even a feeble echo in the Land of Israel. In contrast, the hearts of the Hasidic leaders throbbed with expectations of strengthening religious faith even more because of the immediate encounter with the holy place and separation from “the land of impurity.” The timing of the expedition was no coincidence, for the Hasidim, too, were aware of the shifts in international relations in the mid-1770s. Abraham of Kalisk was correct in stating that stability had returned to the region, as the wars had abated. The revolt of Ali Bey, the ruler of Egypt, had been suppressed, and the rule of Daher al-Omar (1689–1775) in the north of the Land of Israel had collapsed after about half a century, during which he was the active leader in the region. The Ottoman Empire regained control through the governor of Sidon, Ahmad al-Jezzar (1722–1804), and it was later assisted by the Jewish magnate, H.aim Farh.i, his financial agent in Acre. The Russo-Turkish war, which ended in 1774 with the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, restored security to travelers by sea in the Mediterranean. The presence of the Russian fleet there and in the Black Sea and the Partition of Poland strengthened Russia’s position as a rising power, expanding its area of influence. The words of the Karaite, Joseph Kusdini of Chufut-Kale in the Crimean Peninsula, enable us to feel the spirit of the period and his amazement, mingled with surprise and hostility, at the strengthening of Russia under Katherine II: “Then the evil state of Moscow, that bitter and impetuous nation, a nation whose language is not understood, stretched its hand over the whole world, and not a place was left where it did not make war.” Abraham of Kalisk was convinced that the hand of Providence was watching over the immigrants, since such a prominent historical change had taken place before their arrival. Kusdini, though he was expressing an anti-rabbinic polemic, added that in the new circumstances, messianic hopes

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had arisen among the Jews, “and they thought the end of time had come, as promised by the prophets.”50 For the Hasidim, the voyage was full of manifest miracles. One of the ships sank in a storm on the Black Sea, but thirty of the eighty-three Jews on board were rescued and took temporary refuge in the rabbinical and Karaite communities on the shores of the Crimean Peninsula. When Yisrael of Polotsk was sent from Safed to solicit contributions, he consoled his listeners, saying that none of the core of Hasidim had been harmed: “Not one of us was affected, not even from the ship that sailed to the state of Crimea, for our many sins, which broke up, and the people in it, the few . . . that [God] saved from the rack and ruin, were all people known by name, in a supernatural way.” In fact, the panic was huge; it emerges, for example, from Kusdini’s description: “One of the ships broke up in the sea and of them, that is, of the rabbinics, fifty-five were drowned, men, women, lads and maidens, babies, infants, and sucklings.” In contrast, Yehoshua’ Ben David emerged safely from the wreckage of the ship with his wife and daughter. Bereft of everything, he addressed the Karaite h.akham, Hillel Ben Yitsh.aq Kirimi, from the city of Kafa, and begged for help. The Jews of the city who were “believers in the Talmud” were poverty-stricken and barely could supply food. Therefore, “I call to you merciful people to take pity on me and on my wife and give us some clothing to be on us to shield us during the day and to cover ourselves at night.” Helpless and alien to the foreign surroundings, David thought at first that he should return to Poland, but in his second appeal to the h.akham, he recovered and understood, so he said, that his tribulations were a test from heaven, and he must continue and not despair. He asked for fare on “a ship that was sailing for Istanbul on the following day” and for the h.akham to mediate between the Hasidim and the Turks, “for I have no word in my mouth or answer on my tongue to speak with the Ishmaelites,” whereas Hebrew connected them. David added that he was addressing the h.akham because “the people who hold by the religion of the Talmud” were imploring him to remain and serve as a slaughterer, whereas the Karaites understood better that he wished to settle “in a place of Torah” and to be in the company of Menahem Mendel. He spoke to Hillel Ben Yitsh.aq Kirimi in the name of Jewish-Karaite solidarity (“for we are brothers, we have one father, one God created us”). He and two other survivors, Aharon Ben Yitsh.aq and Aharon Ben Meir, confessed to the special affinity they felt with the Karaites because of the unstinting assistant they provided for the survivors from Poland.51 Although some of the travelers were deterred “and went back in mid-journey from the seacoast and from Istanbul,” the leaders in Safed, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk and Abraham of Kalisk, sent letters to Poland, giving positive

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meaning to the difficulties and failures, mainly describing their devotion to their purpose and the miracles of their rescue.52 Nevertheless, they found it hard to disguise their distress. In the spring of 1781, Menahem Mendel sent a heartbreaking letter from Tiberias to his Hasidim in White Russia, apologizing that he must share with them the troubles of the Land of Israel. He was constrained to tell the truth, he wrote, in order to warn those who planned to join the settlers about the tribulations they had undergone in the past three years. He urged them not to do it, because “in our opinion we have suffered so many torments that all the servants of the Lord had perished [punished by heaven] in our torments . . . and the sufferings that we underwent are enough for all those who want to attach themselves to the domain of the Lord in truth.” Of course, the main purpose of the letters was to open the recipients’ hearts for assistance and contributions, but as in many letters from the earlier decades, the natives of Europe complained about their foreignness and about the difficulty of adapting to the East. Not only is the poverty here many times harsher than what you know in Poland, Menahem Mendel wrote, but the price of food is high, and barriers of language and custom kindle conflict. At first the Hasidim were welcomed by the Sephardim, and Menahem Mendel even married his son to the daughter of a Jerusalem family, but in time, things went wrong. He complained that the Sephardim maltreated them, and they had also been joined by Ashkenazim, who he called contemptuously “mindless.” The elitist group of Hasidim, “men after our own heart” who regarded themselves as “servants of the Lord,” encountered rejection.53 The opposition to Hasidism that was aroused in Vilna in the disputes of 1772 also reached the Land of Israel and pursued the immigrants. Immediately after their departure from White Russia, a letter of denunciation was sent to the Sephardic community in Tiberias. Abraham of Kalisk dismissed the importance of this denunciation, and when he received the letter, he burned it in a public ceremony. In his opinion, no one took it seriously, and “all the Sephardim know that all the testimony that was gathered out of the Land that, by the grace of the Blessed Name, in everyone’s eyes it was a mockery and a great ridicule, and this zealotry because of greed was repugnant to them, just as it is repugnant to all the men after our own heart.” However, this opposition continued to vex Menahem Mendel and Abraham of Kalisk. In early 1778, they sent a letter to “the wise lords and judges in the country of Volhynia and Lithuania and Red Rus [Galicia],” seeking to dispel the tension. Though his name was not mentioned, the figure of the Vilna Gaon hovered over the letter. Accusations were made against the Hasidim—they were portrayed in a distorted light, and the Vilna Gaon was deceived. Now the Hasidim were in an inferior position, and great

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anger was directed at them, “since every mouth speaks slanderously of us, and the people are like swords of fire, everyone against his brother, without mercy, therefore even though my desire was for peace, he would not think in his heart other than to destroy. . . . I speak for peace; they are for war.” However, had not the time come for rethinking? Was there no room for forgiveness and peace? In a letter addressed directly to the heads of “the faithful, holy community of Vilna,” Menahem Mendel placed blame for this conflict on informers, who incited against the Hasidim “and who deceived the Zadikim, who in their innocence go to try a capital case.” On the soil of the Holy Land, he swore that “there is not among us in our opinions and beliefs, perish the thought, any hint of a flaw or perish the thought heresy against our holy Torah, written or oral, or even some restriction or fence of a commandment against the Lord and against His messiah.” Hasidism was free of any taint of religious heresy. The division between the camps was worrisome, and solidarity must overcome it.54 The feeling of being an innocent, persecuted victim arises from these letters, and the injured voice of the Hasidim is heard. This was exceptional testimony from the side under attack, which had suffered dreadful injuries from accusatory letters, and the decision to go to the Land of Israel and establish a Hasidic settlement there as a city of refuge appears to have been a radical reaction to that persecution.

Note s 1. Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 178–183. 2. Mendelssohn’s correspondence with the crown prince of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel (1770) in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7, 299–305. See Jacob Katz, “Shlosha mishpatim apologetiim begilguleihem,” Zion 23–24 (1958– 59): 174–193; Katz, Bein yehudim legoyim (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1977), 168–179. 3. Jacob Emden, “H.ali-ketem,” derush tefilat yesharim (Altona: Published by the Author, 1775), fols. 22–28. 4. Ibid., fols. 24–28. 5. Solomon Ben Joel of Dubno, Evel yah.id (Berlin: Unknown, 1776). 6. See Ronald Schechter, “A Jewish Agent in Eighteenth-Century Paris: Israël Bernard de Valabrègue,” Historical Reflections 32, no. 1 (2006): 57–59; Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California, 2003), 35–36, 135–136. 7. See Antoine Lilti, The Invention of Celebrity, 1750–1800, trans. Lynn Jeffress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 14–23.

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8. Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette (May 17, 1778) in Bernier, Imperial Mother, Royal Daughter: The Correspondance of Marie Antoinette and Maria Theresa (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986), 250–251; Maria Theresa to Joseph II (1773) in Edward Crankshaw, Maria Theresa (London: Bloomsbury Reader, 2013), 366. 9. Marc Saperstein, “In Praise of an Anti-Jewish Empress: Ezekiel Landau’s Eulogy for Maria Theresa,” in Your Voice Like a Ram’s Horn: Themes and Texts in Traditional Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1966), 445–484. 10. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (Leipzig: bey der Beygandschen Buchhandlung, 1774); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker (London: Penguin, 1979). See Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2011). 11. See Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013), 94–95. 12. Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette (June 2, 1775) in Bernier, Imperial Mother, 162. 13. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, par. 42. 14. See Isser Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, Tradition and Progress, 1715– 1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 302; Helen Liebel-Weckowicz and Franz Szabo, “Modernization Forces in Maria Theresa’s Peasent Policies, 1740–1780,” Social History 15, no. 30 (1982): 301–331. 15. Ezekiel Landau, Derushei hatslah. (Warsaw: Levin Epstein, 1901), fol. 55b. 16. See Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, 301–306; Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), 178–180; Simon Dixon, Katherine the Great (New York: Ecco, 2009), 228–237. 17. See Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, 323–332. 18. Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette (May 30, 1776) in Bernier, Imperial Mother, 190. 19. Bernier, Imperial Mother, 217–218, 220, 223, 232–233; Crankshaw, Maria Theresa, 400–401; Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 139. 20. Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette (June 30, 1780) in Bernier, op. cit., 298–299. 21. See Ian Haywood and John Seed, eds., The The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Percy Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1937), 103–104; Jerry White, London in the 18th Century (London: Vintage Books, 2013), 532–542.

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22. See Stanley F. Chyet, The Event Is With the Lord (Cincinnati: The Hebrew Union College, 1976); David McCollough, 1776 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005). 23. Jonas Philips to Samson Gumpel (Av 12, 5536) in “Notes,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 25 (1917): 128–131. 24. See Eli Faber, A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654–1820 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 84–106; Charles Duschinsky, The Rabbinate of the Great Synagogue, London, from 1756–1842 (London: Humphrey Milford, 1921), 78; Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654– 1800; Michael Hoberman, New Israel / New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), ch. 6; Jacob Marcus, Mavo letoldot yahadut ameriqa betequfat reshita (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1971), 116–131, 213–235; Leon Hüner, “Francis Salvador, A Prominent Patriot of the Revolutionary War,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 9 (1901): 107–122. 25. See Marcus, Mavo letoldot yahadut ameriqa betequfat reshita, 223–224. 26. For Haijm Isaac Karigal’s sermon in Newport, see Karigal, A Sermon Preached at the Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, Called “The Salvation of Israel” (Newport: S. Southwick, 1773); Stanley F. Chyet, ed., Rabbi Carigal Preaches in Newport (Cincinnati: The Hebrew Union College, 1966). On Karigal and Stiles, see Avraham Ya’ari, Sheluh.ei erets yisrael (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1951), 580–583; Lee M. Friedman, Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal, His Newport Sermon and His Yale Portrait (Boston: The Merrymount Press, 1940); George A. Kohut, ed., Ezra Stiles and the Jews (New York: Philip Cowen, 1902); Laura Leibman, “From Holy Land to New England Canaan,” Early American Literature 44, no. 1 (2009): 71–93; Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 145–152; Hoberman, New Israel / New England, ch. 5. 27. See Friedman, Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal, 16–17. 28. See Kohut, Ezra Stiles and the Jews, 130–131. 29. See Abram Vossen Goodman, “A German Mercenary Observes American Jews during the Revolution,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59 (1970): 227. 30. See Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land, 152. 31. On Azulai’s second mission, see Meir Benayahu, Rabbi h.ayim yosef david azulai (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1959), 35–53; Ya’ari, Sheluh.ei erets yisrael, 578; Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land. 32. H.aim Yosef David Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov hashalem, ed. Aron Freimann (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1934), 53–55. See Tsur, Gevirim veyehudim ah.erim bamizrah. hatikhon ha’otmani, 1750–1830 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2016), 174–175.

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33. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 51, 53. See Tsur, Gevirim veyehudim ah.erim, 167–168. 34. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 137, 140. 35. Ibid., 163. 36. Ibid., 56, 103, 108, 143. 37. Ibid., 61, 71, 78, 86, 101, 168–169, respectively. 38. Ibid., 67–70, 80–81, 83–84, 91–92, respectively. On his visit to the palace in Mantua, see David Malkiel, “Palazzo Te between Science and Imagination,” Journal of Early Modern History 20 (2016): 429–461. 39. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 119–122. 40. Ibid., 120–124. 41. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 56, 120, 139, 143–144, 165, respectively. On his attitude toward Muslims, see Tsur, Gevirim veyehudim ah.erim, 183–184. 42. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 85, 89, 103, 111, 116. 43. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 114–117; and see Richard Menkis, “Patriarchs and Patricians: The Gradis Family of Eighteenth-Century Bordeaux,” in Between East and West: Jews in Changing Europe, 1750–1870, ed. Frances Malino and David Sorkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 11–45. 44. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 122, 137. 45. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 157. 46. Ibid., 122, 141, 165. See Matthias Lehmann, “Levantinos and Other Jews: Reading H. Y. D. Azulai’s Travel Diary,” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 3 (2007): 1–34. 47. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 107–108. 48. On the immigration of the Hasidim in 1777, see Yisrael Halperin, Ha’aliyot harishonot shel hah.asidim leerets yisrael (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1947), 608–629; Ya’ari, Sheluh.ei erets yisrael, 608–629; David Assaf, “‘Sheyatsa shmu’a sheba mashiah. ben david’: or h.adash ‘al ‘aliyat hah.asidim beshnat taf-quf-lamed-zayin,” Zion 61 (1996): 319–346; Jacob Barnai, ed., Igrot h.asidim meerets yisrael (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1980), 56; Jacob Barnai, Historiografia uleumiyut: megamot beh. eqer erets yisrael veyishuva hayehudi, 634–1881 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1995), 140–159; Arieh Morgenstern, “Hamegamot hameshih.iyot bereshit tsemih.at hah.asidut,” in Mystiqa umeshih.iyut: me’aliyat haramh.al ‘ad hagaon mivilna (Jerusalem: Maor, 1999), 180–208; Ra’aya Haran, “Ma hini’a et talmidei hamagid la’alot leerets hisrael?,” Cathedra 76 (June/July 1995): 77–95; Nah.um Karlinsky, Historia shekeneged, “Igrot hah.asidim meerets yisrael”: hateqst vehaqonteqst (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1998); Immanuel Etkes, “’Al hameni’im le’aliyat hah.asidim leerets yisrael,” in Leshem shamayim: h.asidim, mitnagdim, maskilim uma shbeineihem (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2016), 98–136. 49. Barnai, Igrot h.asidim meerets yisrael, 66–69. 50. The testimony of Joseph Kusdini in Assaf, “‘Sheyatsa shmu’a sheba mashiah. ben david,’” 327–329; Morgenstern, “Hamegamot hameshih.iyot

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bereshit tsemih.at hah.asidut,” 181–185. See Halperin, Ha’aliyot harishonot shel hah.asidim leerets yisrael, 27–29. 51. Barnai, Igrot h.asidim meerets yisrael, 56–62, 76. For a reconstruction of the shipwreck, see Assaf, “‘Sheyatsa shmu’a sheba mashiah. ben david,’” 322–331. 52. Barnai, Igrot h.asidim meerets yisrael, 63, 71, 75–77, respectively. 53. Ibid., 67, 83–88. 54. Barnai, Igrot h.asidim meerets yisrael, 63–65, 68, 69–73, respectively. See also Halperin, Ha’aliyot harishonot shel hah.asidim leerets yisrael, 31–32; Mordecai Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem bashanim 5532–5575 (1772–1815), vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 89–100.

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CURING THE “MAL ADY OF MY NATION” Days of Individualism and Reform

Aaron Isaak (1730–1816), who was the same age as Menah.em Mendel of Vitebsk, also went to a new land, but not to seek refuge. Rather, he wished to exploit the new winds that were blowing in the courts of the rulers of Europe and to improve the living conditions of the Jewish minority as much as possible. His vision was firmly planted on solid ground; he strove to improve his own personal welfare and to establish a new foothold for settlement and commerce in northern Europe. In 1777, when he managed to obtain royal permission to establish a Jewish community in Stockholm, his heart swelled with a feeling of great accomplishment. From his point of view, migration to the kingdom of Sweden was a pioneering adventure tantamount to the discovery of an unknown land, and the country opening its gates to Jewish settlement was a historical event of the first order. In contrast to the yearning of the Hasidic leaders, who ascended to “the land of our desiring” to live a life of sanctity far from Europe, Isaak sought to open new horizons, to benefit from the policy of a government that removed obstacles and revoked restrictions, and to succeed in practical affairs. As Maimon and Mendelssohn had done, he looked for ways to meet the political and cultural elite of Europe, and, like the adventurers pursuing aristocratic titles, he strove for fame. He did not regard the liberties granted by the state, which lowered the barriers of separation and exclusion, as a threat against his Judaism but rather as a privilege and an opportunity, and it did not occur to him to pay for them by religious conversion or cultural assimilation. His adaptation to European society, which was expressed in his fashionable dress and the languages he learned to speak, was connected with an inclusive conception of religion and intuitive humanism, which made possible the direct

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and open encounter with the non-Jewish world. He did not claim to be a learned Jew, but he clung to fear of God and love for his fellow man. The hundred pages of his memoirs, written in Yiddish when he was already in his seventies, begin by presenting the writer as a man who was not learned, whose favorite language was spoken Yiddish, who did not know Hebrew well enough, and who came from a family of merchants. Following that, Isaak presents the story of his life, which was entirely marked by the drive for achievement and excellence, economic affluence, the prosperity of his family, and tranquility and by his devotion to the establishment of the new community in Sweden.1

I A m th e One W ho “Fou n ded th e State of S w eden” His father’s death drove Isaak’s prosperous family into poverty. They lived in the town of Treuenbrietzen, south of Berlin. His two younger brothers died, his two sisters became servants, and at the age of fourteen, he was already supporting himself as a peddler among the houses of the peasants, having buried his dream of developing his artistic talents. Instead, he learned the trade of metal casting, which proved to be much in demand and profitable and was very close to being an art form. He became an engraver of seals, a polisher of precious stones, and a designer of aristocratic coats of arms. This expertise in a rare profession gave him self-confidence and placed him on the path to success. In his ambition to better himself, he planned to go to England, but when he went to the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, he discovered great demand for his profession, with almost no competition. He was impressed by the beautiful towns of northern Germany such as Schwerin, Rostock, and Bützow, where he met his wife and chose to settle. His memoirs trace the formation of the values of a middle-class craftsman and entrepreneur. Isaak was fortunate in practicing a trade that supported him and in enjoying a good marriage (“we had such contentment that it was as if we were as rich as millionaires”), children, and membership as a respected householder in a community whose institutions functioned well. His income increased during the Seven Years’ War, enabling him to buy a house with a small garden, to keep servants, and also to help others. His talent in forming good relations with aristocrats, army officers, and savants such as the Hebraist Oluf Tychsen helped him greatly in establishing himself. However, Isaak constantly thought about how to progress even farther. His new dream was to get to Sweden and settle there, though he knew that the kingdom did not allow Jews to enter. The challenge appeared to be insuperable, which only increased the engraver’s determination. He planned his adventurous trip of 1774 in great detail.

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He left his family behind and went to Stralsund, on the Baltic, where the Swedes maintained an enclave on German soil and Jews had been living for twenty years. He received orders for work, which placed him in contact with officers and the aristocratic leaders of the city, and they provided him with letters of recommendation to the court in Stockholm and with a travel permit. The governor of the city, Karl Sparre, and the young king, Gustav III (1746–1792), became Isaak’s strongest supporters, and their commitment to reforms in the spirit of enlightened absolutism was a necessary condition for success in overcoming the long tradition of barring Jewish settlement. His family sought to prevent him from making the trip, showing how daring and adventurous they thought it was, although the distance was relatively short. Aaron’s brother Abraham warned his wife, who remained in Bützow, not to allow her husband to go to Sweden, and she herself wrote an urgent, reproachful letter to him: How can you abandon a wife and five children and set out on an irresponsible trip? She continued, “You have already done a lot of silly things in your life, but this plan is the silliest of all. To go there, a place where there are no Jews, and it is forbidden for a Jew to enter, to a place where you don’t even know the language!” A few days later, Isaak’s daughter arrived in Stralsund in a panic with a letter from his wife begging him to change his mind. His daughter burst into tears: “My dear father, if you go on this trip, you’ll never see me again in your life.” But he did not relent and sent her back home immediately. The efforts to deter him continued until the last minute. He reported that even after he had mounted the bridge leading to the postal ferry that took him to nearby Ystad, less than a day’s sail away, a large group of local Jewish men and women tried to stop him. It was as if he were about to emigrate to America, he said. Some people even boarded the ship with him and only disembarked at the last minute, when they saw that they were weighing anchor.2 In his autobiography, Isaak describes the move to Sweden as no less than a heroic act. Nothing deterred him, and the social and family pressure did not prevail. After about a month in Ystad and another month in Malmö, during which he began to learn the language, he reached his desired destination. He treated the moment when his carriage reached Stockholm as if he were disembarking on shores where no human had tread before him: “I arrived here on the New Moon of Tammuz, 5534 (June 10, 1774), and it was at exactly nine in the morning.”3 Then began a prolonged struggle for the right to remain in the city. Isaak reported to the authorities, presented the recommendations he had received, and lodged repeated requests by means of a lawyer he had hired. He was told that no Jew had ever lived there, and it would not be easy to receive permission. However, Sparre, the governor of Stockholm, was tireless in assisting

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him. He conveyed Isaak’s requests to the king, advised him how to maneuver through the bureaucratic labyrinth, and patiently bore Isaak’s protests, for he was not willing to accept refusal. The king himself was on Isaak’s side, appreciating the value of his professional expertise for the state, while other members of the government barricaded themselves behind the prohibition of many years’ standing, insisting that it could not be altered. Isaak continued to argue, demanding in the name of humanity that the state must grant him a part in its liberties. In the end, about a year after his arrival (June 2, 1775), he received the hoped-for privilege for himself and his family. He immediately wrote to his wife, instructing her to sell their house and come to him with the children. Opponents of the agreement refused to accept it and revolted against what they called the king’s permission to pollute their holy country with Jews, to no avail. With a feeling of satisfaction, Isaak described his accomplishment to Tychsen in a letter in Yiddish. The king and all his ministers had looked favorably upon him, and he had received the right to stay in the kingdom, which had never been given to any Jew before him.4 The way to Sweden had been opened, and in the following two years, Isaak continually worked to expand the privilege and open the gates of Stockholm to other Jews so that an organized community could exist whose members could pray as a congregation and maintain kosher slaughtering, instruction in Torah for the children, and burial. He was the leader of the community, and the authorities granted him the authority to supervise Jewish immigration, to decide who was permitted to live in the city and who would be asked to leave. In the Hebrew introduction to his memoirs, he wrote that he had done it all by himself, and the great and unprecedented achievement was to be attributed to him alone: “I, Aaron the son of his honor Rabbi Yitsh.aq Itzik, founded the state of Sweden, for before me there was not a single Jew living in the whole state of Sweden, at any time, until I came here and found favor in the eyes of our lord, his highness, the great and pious king Gustav III.” Toward the conclusion of his book, in the first year of the new century, he attached a list of sixty-nine heads of households and taxpayers in Stockholm as proof of his great success, which, he claimed, no one but himself could have achieved.5

Th e V i lna Gaon in Königsberg, M en del ssohn w ith K a nt, a n d M a i mon in Prussi a A few months after the immigration of the Hasidim, apparently in the spring of 1778 or a few years earlier, the man who had labeled them a danger to the stability of the religion and led to their persecution also left Vilna on his way to

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the Land of Israel. As no sources are extant similar to the letters of the Hasidim, we cannot know what impelled the Gaon, who was known as a sequestered and perpetual student of Torah, to travel to Jerusalem just at that time and to leave his family behind. The Gaon was a contemporary of Isaak, but the gap between their aspirations was huge, though neither hesitated to distance himself from his family for a long while in order to accomplish them. The voyage was aborted, and the Gaon returned home without reaching his destination. An entry in the community register of The Hague, shortly after Azulai visited there, also records a contribution for a traveler who might be identifiable as the Gaon: “R. Eli[jah] of Vilna who is going to the Land of Israel.”6 A letter from the Gaon to his wife from a road station in Königsberg remains from this short journey, shedding light on his values and beliefs. With his eyes open, emphasizing that he was not one of those who abandon their families to earn a livelihood (which is what he might have thought about Isaak), in fact he abandoned his wife and children to gain spiritual benefit for himself, though he did plant hope in the hearts of his dear ones that they might join him in the future. Meanwhile, he left instructions for preserving peace in his family and, more than that, to keep a climate of proper spiritual intensity. In the absence of the head of the family, according to his patriarchal views, his wife was obliged to obey his instructions, for “no woman is worthy except she who does her husband’s bidding, especially since I am writing the words of the living God to her.” This letter was viewed by its author as an authoritative ethical work. Hence, his wife was commanded to read it to the members of the family every week, especially on the Sabbath before the meal. He told her that he had chosen a journey of ascetic withdrawal from the world, even at the price of giving up his family and library. This was a defiant step, a declaration that “this world is all vanity.” The Gaon demanded that his patterns of behavior and high standards—fear of heaven, seclusion, building walls between the home and the outside world— should also be adopted by his wife and children. Without mentioning her name even once, he directed her to adopt a severe and dreary way of life: “I admonish you to accustom yourself to dwelling alone” and to speak as little as possible, for every speech act endangered a person in the world to come. Idle speech in the synagogue was catastrophic, and “for these things a person must descend very deep into the underworld.” His daughters were to be educated to read only ethical works in Yiddish, and if they uttered a curse or a lie, his wife should “beat them [in another version of the letter: “with cruel blows”] and have no mercy on them at all.” He recommended that moral preaching should be in soft language, but he did not hesitate to keep his daughters secluded from the world: “The main thing is, perish the thought, that they should not go out of the

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house.” In contrast, the sons were expected to advance in Torah study. The evil impulse was the great enemy that threatened everyone, but defense against it differed by gender: “For males, Torah study, for females, modesty.” The Gaon believed that this education would enable the family to attain its spiritual goal, “and especially if we merit a dwelling in the Land of Israel, for there one must greatly walk in the ways of the Lord.”7 In Königsberg, no one was waiting for the Gaon, the man who was to take a central place in the history of Judaism both as the standard-bearer of opposition to Hasidism and as the inspiration to the founding fathers of the Lithuanian yeshiva and the ethos of lamdanut (Torah study). By contrast, in the summer of 1777, when Moshe Mendelssohn arrived in that city in eastern Prussia, he was received with exceptionally enthusiastic favor. Aristocrats and scholars, the most prominent of whom was Emanuel Kant, sought him out. Upon his departure for Berlin, the local newspaper even published a farewell. The visit of the famous philosopher was a moving event for the residents of the city, who were impressed by his noble manner, his openness, and his ability to befriend everyone who desired his company.8 Mendelssohn’s letters from the trip were also very different from those of the other Jewish travelers of his day. Almost all of them were fond and homesick personal letters to his wife, Fromet, along with reports about the trip itself, the weather, the successful resolution of his business problems, and various meetings. Central to the letters was concern for his beloved family. This short travel journal in the form of letters in Judeo-German was glowing and projected tranquility and contentment. “Nothing is more enjoyable in the world,” he wrote from Friedberg on July 18, than to travel in the pleasant season of the year in the company of good friends. He always addressed his wife as “libesh [dearest] Fromet” or “libesh Kind,” and in her only extant letter, she opened with “Dear Moses, may you live long,” and she signed as “your Fromet.” After only two weeks of the trip had passed, he wrote to her, “I hope that, God willing, I will be in your company again in another three weeks,” but “three weeks are a long and sad time for me.” Before setting out, he wrote, “Until now, I have never been far away from you for such a long time,” and he promised that he would never be absent from the home for long. In almost every letter, he inquired after the health of his mother-in-law, who lived in their home, and after their five children. He signed one of his letters, “Be well, my dear Fromet! Find contentment with our children, as much as you can, from your humble husband, Moshe of Dessau.” He implored his wife to tell him how the children’s studies were going, to enclose letters from them, and to kiss them for him.

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In contrast to the severe instructions of the Vilna Gaon’s letter and the demands to shut out the world, Mendelssohln’s letters are gentle and open. “In my thoughts,” he wrote, “I kiss the beloved Brendel, Recha, Joseph, Hinde, Abraham a thousand times.” In answer to their letters, he wrote: “You gave me great satisfaction, my dear children, with what you wrote to me.” He expected Brendel to improve her reading, and from Joseph, that he would receive a good evaluation from his teacher Solomon Dubno. There was almost no barrier between the private and familial and the general and public, and Fromet was a loving spouse, a partner, and a supporter. He wrote to her that he had been in Königsberg for three days, doing nothing but constantly going out on visits and receiving visitors. But during the first days, he had not yet made the acquaintance of Christians, “except for Kant and several people he recommended to me.”9 Fromet reported news about the family circle, friends, and the running of the bourgeois home they had established; they went to the theater and were hosted by the Lessing family for light conversation and coffee. Brendel played piano, and Recha was diligently working on reading French. But his absence was very much felt, and Fromet awaited his letters impatiently. “Yes, dear Moses, we had guests and we were invited, we went to the Comedy,” Fromet wrote with love, missing him. “In all this continual boredom, which I don’t feel at all when you are in my company, you must believe me that at this hour, while I am conversing with you, is the only one in the past three days that gives me contentment.”10 Kant confided in his former student, the physician and philosopher Marcus Herz, that Mendelssohn was “a rare man” after meeting him at the university in Königsberg. “Yesterday [August 18, 1777] he honored me by attending my lectures,” but, to his consternation, these were summaries of what Kant had taught before the vacation, and they did not suit “such an esteemed guest.” Kant thought Mendelssohn probably was surprised that his lectures weren’t clear or original enough. With self-criticism and a sense that he had not sufficiently taken advantage of Mendelssohn’s visit—and perhaps disappointed him—Kant implored Herz to help him keep up the friendly connection that he had made with Mendelssohn. There was no doubt that in his view, he and Mendelssohn were on the same level as philosophers and that mutual admiration strengthened the connection between them. The wish that Kant compressed into a few words expressed the exceptional figure of the Jewish philosopher: “Today Mr. Mendelssohn, your dear friend, and (as I flatter myself) mine as well, left [Königsberg]. If a man like him were to be found permanently in Königsberg, as a close acquaintance, a man with such a delicate temperament, a good spirit, and Enlightenment, how much that would enrich my soul with

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what is completely lacking for me here, what I most yearn for, more and more as I grow older!”11 While the meeting with Kant marked his affiliation with the enlightened circle of intellectuals in Germany, at the beginning of the journey, Mendelssohn precisely traced the boundary of the area from which he wished to isolate himself. At one of the waystations, when he passed through Polish territory for the first time in his life, he wrote home in revulsion: “We are now turning our back on Poland. This is a country, I tell you, the way the Ninth of Av [the day of fasting and mourning for the destruction of the Temple] is a holiday. Nothing interests the people here except superstitions and brandy. Now to the post horses, to get away from here as fast as possible.”12 It is doubtful whether a night in an inn and a few hours of travel in a coach could have elicited such a critical judgment. Most likely his revulsion was nourished to no slight degree by the poor image of Poland in the eyes of the elites of Central and Western Europe. Contempt for benighted Poland, whose citizens were ignorant drunks, as the opposite of the Enlightenment is yet another aspect of the erection of a cultural division between Germans and Poles within eighteenth-century Ashkenazi Jewry. In 1777, Solomon Maimon also turned his back on Poland and reached Königsberg, but as a refugee who sought to save himself from that backward country, to fulfill his dream, and to slake his thirst for knowledge. He abandoned his wife and son, who apparently had known nothing of his plans, and rode in a Jewish merchant’s coach. For him the path from Poland to Germany was a one-way street whose significance was cultural conversion. Crossing the border conveyed him to a new realm, but he wandered in it as a refugee and foreigner who never managed entirely to shed his previous identity. The journey to Berlin was long and frustrating. At his very first way station, in the city of Kant, the philosopher with whom he would later dare to disagree, difficulties arose. A Jewish physician sent him to an apartment that he rented out to Jewish students. They didn’t conceal their mockery, bursting into laughter when they saw “a Polish-Lithuanian man of about twenty-five, with a rather long beard, dressed in ragged, filthy clothing, whose language was a mixture of Hebrew, Judeo-German, Polish, and Russian.” Their first impression changed, he said, when he passed the test. A copy of Mendelssohn’s famous book, Phaedon, lay on their table. Maimon proved that he could read the book in German, translate it into Hebrew, and explain the ideas. The students were impressed and helped him out, recommending that he should go on to Berlin. Fifteen years later, when he wrote The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, he described this first encounter with young Jews who had adopted the appearance and culture of Germany. By the time he wrote the book, he was already a clean-shaven

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German philosopher who wore a wig. But even then, after he had shed his traditional Jewish garb and stopped calling himself Shlomo Ben Yehoshua’ of Lithuania, his friends took note of his body language and way of speaking and saw them as Polish.13 Berlin—his soul’s desire and where he arrived after an exhausting twomonth journey—closed its gates before Maimon. While Mendelssohn traveled between Königsberg and Berlin in his wealthy friends’ comfortable carriage, Maimon sailed to Stettin under difficult conditions (“Not once did I get to enjoy a warm meal. And I had to sleep in a storage room on full, hard sacs”). He went on from there by foot to Frankfurt on the Oder. His existential situation as a Jewish beggar, with no hold on life, struck him like lightning. Weak, hungry, and penniless, “I sat down beneath a linden tree and began to weep bitterly.” In accordance with the General Privilege, issued by the king of Prussia in 1750, Maimon was arrested at the Rosenthal Gate to Berlin and placed in a shelter for the indigent. There he found himself with sick people and “lewd rabble,” with whom he had no common language. He told a community official who interrogated him that he wished to study medicine, but when he later told a rabbi, “an orthodox zealot,” that he possessed a commentary on Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, he was suspected of heresy. The community officials gave him some money but denied him entry to the city. “The ultimate fulfillment of all my hopes and wishes was suddenly blocked,” Maimon wrote. Great was his despair, and the rejection was humiliating. This was on a Sunday. Many people were strolling about, but “most of them paid no attention to the wailing worm.” Lacking all hope, he then spent several months roaming about with a Jewish beggar, who introduced him to the secrets of beggardom. When they reached Posen (Poznan) and Maimon found himself once more in Poland, from which he had fled, he understood that the only way open to him to escape from a miserable life of poverty and to gain high social status was to revert to the figure of a Lithuanian scholar. Indeed, after displaying his talents in Talmud and being embraced and supported by the rabbi of the community, he gained the status of rabbi and once again supported himself as a teacher, this time in the home of one of the wealthiest men of the community, and he enjoyed the honor showered on him. He had good memories of the two years he spent in Posen (1778–1779): “All the scholars in the town sought me out to engage me in debate. . . . The more the town’s scholars got to know me, the more they respected me. This time was, without a doubt, the happiest and most upstanding period in my life.”14 This conservative, rabbinical appearance was soon shown to be merely a mask, and beneath the guise of the Polish rabbi lay a “defiler of sanctity.”

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Maimon almost never attended services in the synagogue and admitted that it was hard for him when he encountered “such superstitious ideas.” Once he mocked those who believed that whoever touched the stag horns on the wall of the entrance to the Jewish community’s house in Posen would die: “You Posen Jews are such fools. You think that anyone who touches this horn will drop dead. Watch me touch it.” The learned men of the community persecuted him until he decided to continue in his wanderings and stick to his original purpose: “Such fanaticism revived my desire to go to Berlin and wipe out whatever was left of my own superstition through enlightenment.”15 Maimon arrived in Berlin in 1779. This time he managed to settle there for a short time under the protection of the families of the economic and cultural elite whose patronage caused a change of direction, as they supported not only Talmud scholars, but also those in whom they discerned the desire to study science and philosophy. Mendelssohn also admired his abilities (“[Mendelssohn] was astonished. Here was a Polish Jew who had only just learned Wolff’s metaphysics, and yet he had been able to penetrate so deeply into it that he could supplant its arguments with a more correct ontology”) and helped him to live decently. Maimon reported proudly that Mendelssohn “recommended me to the best, most enlightened, and wealthiest Jews in Berlin, who looked after my board and other needs. Soon I had a standing invitation to eat with them and use their libraries.” However, Maimon could not shake off his feeling of social inferiority in relation to the wealthy Jews and Mendelssohn’s salon society. Mendelssohn didn’t approve of Maimon’s closeness to the opinions of Spinoza, though he was charmed by his wild thinking. Even when he was told that, behind his back, Maimon called him a “philosophical hypocrite,” he was not insulted. He implored Maimon to return to the fold, to acquire a vocation, and to abandon the libertine way of life. Ultimately it was decided that Maimon must leave Berlin and continue to seek his way.16

Th e Ch a r l ata ns: Fa lk, Phi l a delphi a, Fr a nk, a n d E y be schü tz If Maimon believed that, in contrast to benighted Poland, the Enlightenment had taken absolute control in Central and Western Europe, he was laboring under a delusion. It seems that the trend toward mystery was actually in the ascendant just then, and many people beat their way to the doors of those who had made a reputation as experts in occult doctrines, in calculating the end of days, in magic, in alchemy, and in Kabbalah, even though their opponents

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warned against placing faith in cheats and imposters. Pawel Maciejko has called the second half of the eighteenth century the golden age of charlatans, and this phenomenon also had a prominent Jewish context, both because of curiosity to learn Kabbalah from Jews and because several Jews and converts from Judaism fit very well into that climate, which mingled adventurousness and the ambition for personal renown with purported possession of mystical knowledge and magical powers. Adventurers like Casanova and Geldern constructed an exotic image of themselves and frequently claimed to be noble: “They belonged to the informal pan-European guild of itinerant charlatans, whose members drifted from court to court, rotated from salon to salon, exchanging experiences, swapping mistresses, and underwriting one another’s false bills of exchange.”17 When Maimon, who was in Holland, heard people speaking with excitement about the marvelous deeds of the Kabbalist, Samuel Falk, “the ba’al shem of London,” he could not refrain from declaring that he did not believe even the eyewitnesses, because they were deceived and did not know the natural explanation for the apparently miraculous phenomena: “Perhaps they hadn’t investigated the matter thoroughly enough and had accepted certain preconceived notions as facts. I added that I would continue to doubt the effects of the Kabbalah until someone could prove that they were inexplicable through the familiar laws of nature.”18 In the last decade of his life, Falk had reached the height of his success. Many people throughout Europe spoke of him with awe, and, along with Mendelssohn and Emanuel da Costa, he was apparently the most famous Jew of his time. He was known as Dr. Falk, though in the offices of the Freemasons he was known as “the unknown exalted one,” and one of his French admirers even said that he was thought of as “the chief of all the Jews.”19 Curious travelers streamed to his “court” in London, including aristocrats who hoped for assistance and desired to learn some of his secrets or to observe mysterious, supernatural phenomena and deeds. Through the mediation of Shimon Boaz, from The Hague, a Polish duke, Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski (1734–1836), came to see him, apparently hoping for help in removing Stanislaw Poniatowski from power shortly after the Partition of Poland. Falk might also have met rebellious English politician Lord Gordon. Casanova, who claimed esoteric knowledge, tried to meet Falk, and a connection was made between Falk and Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), who was involved in secret diplomacy and was one of the most influential men among the Freemasons in Europe.20 Giuseppe Balsamo (1743–1795), the count of Cagliostro, who was known for his powers of healing, connections with

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spirits, and the creation of gold, visited London several times. When he went to Saint Petersburg at the end of the 1770s, according to Katherine the Great, he boasted that he possessed all the secrets of Dr. Falk.21 In 1778, when Gotthold Ephraim Lessing composed the dialogues Ernst und Falk about the Freemasons, he used the mystery man’s name. Slightly in advance of his call for religious tolerance in Nathan the Wise, Lessing used the character of Falk to criticize the refusal of the Freemasons to accept Jews and to trace the first outlines of a future in which the difference between Christians, Muslims, and Jews would no longer divide people.22 A decade earlier, Emden was already aware of Falk’s success and his ability to translate the yearning for the occult into influence and money. He wrote that Falk “makes his name great among the uncircumcised and boasts about his knowledge and power, and he has found many non-Jews who shower him with great wealth.”23 When Azulai visited The Hague, “the ba’al shem of London” was a fascinating topic of discussion, and a shroud of mystery was attached to his figure. Rumor had it that he “wears a golden garment with letters of his own making engraved on it, and he has a flying sword, and all his actions are in forests and on the seashore, in seclusion, and he is said to be working for the benefit of the world, and he is of the Tribe of Judah . . . and he is the king of the world.” Displaying an attitude similar to that of Maimon, Azulai added dismissively, “and all sorts of nonsense like that.” Earlier, the emissary from the Land of Israel had met a French noblewoman in Paris who told him about the mystical revelations she had experienced and that, like Swedenborg, she “had seen angels and demons speaking to her, and when they were from the sitra ah.ra, she rejected them.” She had apparently visited Falk in London and received a book of Kabbalah from him. In his travel journal, Azulai dismissed what he had heard as “a gentile woman’s rubbish.” He also attacked contemptuously and bitterly the man “called a ba’al shem, who with his wicked pride has revealed practical Kabbalah and magic spells to some ministers.” Spreading esoteric Jewish knowledge beyond the circle of Kabbalists was a more serious infraction than pretending to possess magical powers.24 In the 1770s, adventurer Simon Geldern also presented himself as an expert in esoteric doctrine, and he, too, apparently sought to meet Falk. Weary of a life of wandering, he finally found a way to settle in an aristocratic court and fulfill his life’s dream. Beginning in 1778, Geldern acquired the surprising and exceptional title of Hof Cabbalist Geheimer Magischer Rat (Court Kabbalist and Magical Privy Counselor) in the Buchweiler palace in the German principality of Hessen-Darmstadt. Indeed, among his papers were found magic spells and amulets, but he himself admitted that in this field he was an

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imposter. For example, when he exploited the trust placed in him during a visit to Bordeaux, “two eminent people, a man and a woman, sought me out and wanted me to solve a practical problem for them by means of the Kabbalah. Although I am no expert in esoteric knowledge, I received twenty Louis d’or from them.”25 In the salons and coffeehouses of the European capitals, people also spoke about animal magnetism, which was somewhere between natural science and esoteric doctrine. It was invented by the Austrian Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). After studying medicine at the University of Vienna, he began treating patients by conveying cosmic energies into their bodies. Mesmerism attracted many adepts, especially after Mesmer went to Paris in 1777, and in individual and group treatments, manifestations of ecstasy, convulsions, and hysteria were seen. While his critics regarded him as a magician, a charlatan, and a cheat, he and his many supporters believed it was “spiritual science.”26 The performances of his Jewish contemporary, Jacob Philadelphia (1735–1795), which combined experiments of nature with supernatural mysteries, were also very popular. Princes and princesses hosted him in their palaces and showered him with golden medallions. An item that appeared in 1775 in a newspaper in Saxony enthusiastically invited the public to observe him: “The great artist, Philadelphia, who has astonished every corner of the earth with his magical deeds” would now appear before the Kurfürst and his family in the spa resort of Bad Lauchstädt. He was an expert in mathematics, magnetism, and magical arts. The editor of the newspaper added his own recommendation and comment, reinforcing his faith in him as a man of science: a hundred years ago he would have been burned at the stake as a witch, but what one sees in his performances is simply incredible.27 Jacob Meyer, the “artist in mathematics and magic” who called himself “Philadelphia,” after the city where he was purportedly born or at least where he had grown up as a boy, wandered among the cities of Europe like Cagliostro and Mesmer, presenting performances that straddled the border between scientific experiments and magical illusions. His true or counterfeit origins in the New World gave him a special aura, but the veil of mystery that enveloped him makes it difficult to evaluate him and trace the course of his life. Only a few stages in his journey are known. He left America for England, going on to Portugal and several royal courts and aristocratic palaces in Central and Western Europe. In 1771, he visited Saint Petersburg and, two years later, Vienna. In 1777, he arrived in Göttingen, where he was caught in an ambush laid for him by one of his fiercest opponents. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), a professor of mathematics and physics, published a warning in the form of a newspaper

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advertisement inviting people to a performance by Jacob Philadelphia but making him a laughingstock: We announce to all lovers of supernatural physics that the famous magician has come to our city; although he could easily have flown in the air, he traveled in a simple post coach. For one thaler, you can see wonders: he chooses two women from the audience, turns them upside down with their legs in the air, and spins them around quickly, without anything happening to them or impairing their modesty. Or he takes a little arsenic, mixes it with milk, and gives it to the women to drink. When they are about to faint, he gives them two or three spoonsful of melted lead. The audience shouts and laughs wildly. All the leaders of the world have already seen his performances, and you should rush to see him. However, not between the hours or eleven and twelve, when he is in Istanbul. This week he is still living in a room above a store, but afterward he will be high in the air, flying over the fountain in the market square.

This announcement emphasized the gap between the reputed scientist from the university and the charlatan who depended on his popularity with the public at large, though they did not have a confrontation, for the miracle worker chose to disappear from the city. Philadelphia’s Jewish origins were never emphasized, and his picture shows a fashionable, clean-shaven man with a wig and a braid. The Jewish magician never converted, as was assumed by those who have written about him. In the early 1780s, he addressed the Prussian government, offering his services, based on his good knowledge of the New World and his command of all the languages needed to succeed in business, including the language of the Blacks, to open up a profitable channel of commerce with North America, as soon as the war there was over. The documents in the office that dealt with this initiative, which sought to inaugurate a new chapter in Philadelphia’s life and to enable him to return to the precincts of his youth, state that this expert in America was in fact “the well-known Jewish performer, Jacob Philadelphia.”28 In the summer of 1776, just when, on the other side of the Atlantic, the principles for a new state were being formulated, shaking off autocratic rule and the class society, Wolf Eybeschütz and Jacob Frank addressed the emperor Joseph II with a request for titles of nobility from the Habsburg Empire. Both of these leaders of Sabbatean groups were looking for a safer place for themselves; Eybeschütz had run away from Altona after amassing debts and his libertine behavior was exposed, and Frank (who already was a Catholic and had a Polish title of nobility) had left Poland after being freed from imprisonment in Częstochowa. The desire for an honorable title, which would enable them to

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deepen their integration into the European aristocracy, marked a clear change in the Sabbatean movement in the final decades of its existence. No longer a deep and subversive trend in the Jewish religion, it now joined a series of secret societies, adventurers, charlatans, and ambitious people who sought to make their way to high status, wealth, and social prestige by exploiting curiosity for the occult. Like the Ba’al Shem of London, Geldern, and Jacob Philadelphia, they sought channels to the heart of royal courts and aristocratic palaces. Eybeschütz found protection in Brno, Moravia, in the home of the Sabbatean Dobruška family. According to Emden’s hostile testimony, the woman of the family, Sheindel Hirshel (whom Emden called “the whore of Brno”), not only took Wolf in and showered him with expensive clothing and money, but also shared her bed with him. The turn in the character of Sabbateanism received decisive expression. Sheindel and Shlomo Dobruška amassed their wealth mainly because of the monopoly on the tobacco tax in Moravia, which they had received from the Austrian regime, enabling them to provide a European education for their twelve children. After her husband’s death, Sheindel continued in her efforts to be accepted by the city’s high society and hosted a select salon in her home for high officials and army officers.29 Ten of her children converted, and some of them gained noble titles. The best known of them was Moses Dobruška (1753–1794), a poet, philosopher, and businessman who, in his short life, assumed several identities. Immediately after his marriage and the birth of his daughter, he converted, and in 1778, he received a noble title and became Franz Thomas von Schönfeld. Karl, his elder brother, who had an audience with Maria Theresa, convinced her that the members of his family were worthy of honorable titles, and their certificate of nobility states that the empress was pleased with Moses’s efforts in spreading Christianity. In this new identity, he drew close to the emperor, Joseph II, and the supporters of reform. He wrote memoranda and served on various delegations for the Austrian government. At the same time, he played central roles in the secret world of the Freemasons. His adventurous career eventually led him to Paris at one of the critical moments of the revolution, and he ended his life under the blade of the guillotine, accused of espionage.30 Eybeschütz also aspired to climb as high as possible in the social ladder and to rub shoulders with the aristocracy, but he achieved his ambitions without converting. He went from Moravia to Saxony, where, under the protection of Prince Elector Friedrich Augustus (the great-grandson of Augustus the Strong), he received the title of Agent of the Court, became wealthy, and purchased a house in Dresden and an estate outside of the city. As he had in Altona, he led an ostentatious life. In July 1776, Joseph II granted him a noble

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title, making the son of Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz the Baron Wolf von Adlersthal. However, when it was noticed that he was Jewish, the certification of his nobility was suspended until he converted to Catholicism. Wolf did not convert, but he used the authorization to grant him a title to improve his social status; occasionally, rumor that he was a baron or a convert to Christianity were sufficient to enhance his reputation. Thus Eybeschütz gained entry in high society, and, as Maciejko put it, he ceased being a Sabbatean leader and became a fake aristocrat and occasionally a fake Christian. Like Samuel Falk, he shared Kabbalistic lore with his aristocratic friends, along with, apparently, calculations of the end of days, central to which was the victory of Christianity over Islam as a step toward fulfillment of the messianic expectations of the Sabbateans.31 Sheindel Dobruška, the patron of the Sabbateans in Moravia, was a cousin of Frank, which is why he went to her immediately after his liberation from prison in Częstochowa in March 1773. Accompanied by eighteen of Frank’s followers, his court migrated to Brno and remained in that city for thirteen years. In possession of passports from Austria, Russia, and Prussia, Frank made his way to the aristocracy, seeking titles and honors, like Eybeschütz. All this time, the “Lord” continued to rule over his faithful “brothers” and “sisters” with a high hand. He demanded obedience, did not hesitate to humiliate the women, and held mysterious ceremonies, strengthening the military character of the group. In Brno, Frank took pride in his “silk cloak lined with sable,” and during only his first year there, he obtained a coach for himself with a pair of white horses. In the following year, he had a more splendid carriage, harnessed to six horses. The guards who accompanied him wore military uniforms, and his servants had gold livery. Rabbi Jacob Galinsky, formerly a Frankist, wrote to Maria Theresa, saying that it was a dangerous sect of converted Jews, but an investigation cleared it of all suspicion, and the denunciation was dismissed. Unlike the case of Eybeschütz, Frank’s appeal to Joseph II for a Habsburg title of nobility was rejected. However, he was received with great honor in the royal court several times. Within four days, in March 1775, Frank and his daughter Eva met twice in Vienna with Joseph II and once with Maria Theresa. The chronicle that reports various events in the Frankist court states that they were received as welcome and honorable guests there: “On [March] 22, the Master [and the Mistress] were with the empress Maria Theresa, and she introduced them to her family. They kissed her hand.” Frank also visited the Schönbrun Palace, lived on the Graben, a splendid street, bathed in the Danube, strolled in the Prater amusement park, and rode about on a black horse while “the whole city marveled.” To demonstrate their Catholic piety, he and his daughter attended churches in Vienna. When Frank returned to Brno from the capital of

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the empire, he issued a declaration testifying again to his complete separation from his former coreligionists: “On May 5, [1776,] the Lord stated that all the Jews who were true believers must enter the Christian religion, but with great shame, with great fear, and they must lose all their property.”32

In th e Na m e of “th e Honor of M a nk in d”: E xclusion, R efor m, a n d U topi a Maria Theresa displayed warm feelings toward Frank and his daughter as converts to Roman Catholicism. For their part, they knew they would gain her favor if they displayed devotion to their new religion. In her latter years, more than three decades after she ordered the expulsion of the Jews of Prague, her Christian zealotry increased, along with her revulsion against Jews. “I know no plague more dreadful than that race,” said the queen angrily in 1777. “Because of their fraud, usury, and greed, they are reducing my subjects to beggary.” The Jews, she added, “do base things that every decent person finds repugnant. Therefore, the Jews must be kept at a distance, and their number must be reduced as much as possible.” In the background lay the bitter dispute she waged with her son, Joseph II, as she sought to prevent him from instituting a policy of toleration for non-Catholics. When he became emperor, he declared that the state must employ talented people with the ability to deal with various matters and leave it to God to reward the good and punish those with evil souls; the ruler is not required to know what transpires in everyone’s thoughts, and he does not have to find ways of punishing them. The queen, by contrast, feared revolutions, as we have seen, and she warned him that such a hasty step would result in the greatest disaster that ever befell the empire.33 News heralding a reaction also arrived from Italy. The death of Pope Clement XIV in 1774 put an end to his relatively liberal policy. He was succeeded by Pius VI (1717–1799), who immediately opposed religious tolerance. When Azulai visited Italy, he heard about the new edict, which the new pope hastened to issue in April 1775, only two months after taking office. In his journal, Azulai wrote: “In Rome there were decrees of the new Pope, and the people were confused and panicked very much.” Later, when he reached Ancona, he reported that the Jews of the papal states were nervously awaiting information: “They are in distress because of the Pope’s decree on the badge, and they are waiting for a good answer to come from Rome.” In the forty-four clauses of the decree, the barriers between Jews and Christians were hardened, and almost every possible kind of contact and encounter in public (meeting in taverns or on city streets) and in private (employing servant women and wet nurses)

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was forbidden. The edict over the Hebrews increased supervision over the approximately five thousand residents of the ghetto in Rome. The rabbis were required to supply a certain number of listeners to the Sunday sermons in the churches, and the requirement to wear the humiliating yellow badge and head coverings for the men and women was more stringently enforced.34 Nearly a quarter of a century was to pass before, on the bayonets of the French Revolution, the ghettoes in Rome and elsewhere in Italy were abolished, along with these restrictions, but during the 1770s as well, voices of protest were heard in European public opinion, calling for change in what appeared to be a shameful policy. For example, in continuation of the trends that had originated with the development of the idea of religious tolerance at the beginning of the century, in 1775, an article entitled “Thoughts on the Fate of the Jews” appeared in the most important literary magazine in Germany. At the same time as the papal edict over the Hebrews restricted Jewish life and excluded and humiliated the Jews, the anonymous author of this article demanded even from those who clung to Christianity the adoption of a humanistic form of discourse. “You oppress these miserable people,” the author harangued his readers, “so you can be nourished by their fat. How great is the shame!” This was not a marginal or remote voice, and Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) of Weimar gave added weight to the words. He was the editor of Teutsche Merkur and was a poet, a prolific author, and the translator of Shakespeare’s plays. In the name of the “honor of mankind,” he and the anonymous author addressed “the true friends of man,” proclaiming that their heart was pained and bleeding because of the hatred and injustice toward the Jews who lived among them. Even if they turned their back on the truth of Christianity, they noted, in the end they were people like us—and, as family members, perhaps even better than us. Along with the discourse of shame and humanity, Wieland also pointed out the economic benefit of not excluding the Jews from “the civic happiness.” They, too, could become “useful members of the state.” The dictionary of the values of humanism and the good of the state became a source of inspiration for programs of reform, which would redefine the status of the Jews in Europe.35 Tension among various principles was notable between policy makers and senior government officials. Even the empress in Vienna, who sought to retain Catholic predominance, more than once showed she could distinguish between religious considerations and the good of the state, as her biographer says: “In all things secular, Maria Theresa herself belonged, without knowing it, to the age of reason.” In his opinion, it was she and not only her son, Joseph II, who built the bridge of transition from feudalism to a centralized,

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bureaucratic regime. A major achievement of her rule in the 1770s was the establishment in 1775 of a compulsory state education system for every boy and girl from the age of six to twelve.36 In April 1776, the new regulations granting special rights to the Jews of Trieste came into effect, and only a short time afterward (on July 16), Maria Theresa signed the Jew Edict (Judenordnung) in an effort to settle the status of the Jews of Galicia. She combined her fear of an increase in the Jewish population and the damage this would cause to the local peasants with a policy of close administrative supervision. Leasing business was restricted, and the poor, aside from isolated cases of old age and illness, were threatened with expulsion. A license was required for marriage. The Jew Edict reorganized the communities as a “general corporation.” On the one hand, Maria Theresa’s legislation fortified the autonomous institutions of historical Polish Jewry. However, on the other hand, it subjected them even further to state institutions. It even appeared that the supra-communal framework had been restored. The policy of centralization of the empire, which was expressed in the new edict, divided the region into six districts and placed a Generaldirektion over Galicia, the seat of which was in Lwow. It was required to appoint a chief rabbi with extensive authority for administering the religious courts, handling the ordination and supervision of community rabbis, running schools, and appointing cantors and slaughterers. Indeed, the significance of the edict was contradictory: the Jews were included in a centralized and supervised system of government, but, as claimed by Joshua Shanes, the historian of the Jews of Galicia, emphasis was placed on isolating the Jews, contrary to the trends toward reform, universal application of the law, and economic integration.37 The effort to regularize the lives of the Jewish minority was notable in other places beginning in the mid-1770s. The instruction sent by Katherine II to Zakhar Grigoryevich Chernyshev (1722–1784), the governor of White Russia, on January 17, 1780, to permit Jews who fulfilled the conditions to join the class of merchants, in accordance with the reform of municipal institutions of 1775, was a turning point in the process of their naturalization. While the Russian regime reinforced the authority of the traditional community so as to facilitate administration of the Jewish minority in the regions conquered from Poland, at the same time, an opening was made for a group of Jews to integrate into the general classes by virtue of their property and vocation. Within a few years, all the Jews of the region were registered in the class of burghers, and the merchants (kuptsy) could even free themselves from subordination to the community and vote and be elected in municipal governments. With Katherine’s reforms, Israel Bartal claims, Russia became, rather surprisingly, the

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first country in Europe to grant the Jews a certain type of emancipation without revoking communal autonomy.38 Administrative and local reforms were also imposed on the Jews of Tuscany. Francesca Bregoli has shown that the possibility of including Jewish property owners in the general regulations, especially those regarding municipalities, appeared in parallel both there and in Russia.39 Shortly after his ascent to the throne in 1775, Louis XVI signed a certificate of naturalization for Cerf Berr (1726–1793) of Medelsheim, a supplier to the French army during the Seven Years’ War and one of the wealthiest leaders of Alsatian Jewry. In return for his services, the king granted him and his descendants the rights and liberties enjoyed by all his subjects, including the possibility of purchasing property anywhere and living in any city. Like Isaak, who exactly then had received a privilege from the king of Sweden enabling him to settle in Stockholm, Berr’s residence in Strasbourg, which had been entirely forbidden to Jews for centuries, was a demonstration of his success.40 He was preceded by a few years by another military supplier and banker, Liefmann Calmer (1711–1784), who had amassed huge wealth and to whom the previous king had granted citizenship in 1769. He exploited his status to penetrate the aristocracy, arousing great resentment because, five years afterward, he bought an estate and took its name, becoming the Baron de Picquigny and receiving the feudal right to appoint clergymen. When Azulai visited him in Paris, this was the conversation of the day, and in his diary, he recorded how Calmer became close to the monarchy: “He has a great privilege from the monarchy, for the king who died, Louis XV, had a concubine, and Calmer served her, and she raised him up to this height.”41 The policy of granting privileges to individuals had characterized the European system for years, whereas the inclusion of Jews in the general order of the government, in the framework of reforms in the spirit of enlightened absolutism, was indeed an innovation. Both the naturalization of property owners and their desire for noble titles and government regulations such as those of Katherine II show that, beginning in this decade, the integration of the Jewish minority had become a central topic on the agenda of various countries. On the other side of the Atlantic, the new country presented an entirely different model, consciously formulated as a drastic correction of the European order. The American Declaration of Independence, which was published twelve days before Maria Theresa’s Judenordnung, challenged official social classes and the policy of privileges by proclaiming that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was universal and self-evident. At least for the legislators in New York and Virginia, it was clear that the Jews were part of the new order and worthy of full political equality. The constitution of New

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York of 1777 adopted the Declaration of Independence, and in a draft of that constitution, John Jay even proposed stating explicitly that “all the Jews” would enjoy freedom and tolerance. When Jay, whose Huguenot family had been persecuted in France, addressed the legislative council of New York, he indicated the sources of inspiration for the revolution: “Jews . . . have as good a right to be exempted from the arbitrary domination of Britain, as they had from the invasions of Egypt, Babylon, Syria, or Rome.” Though in the end they were not mentioned in the constitution, section 38 left no doubt: “The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed in this state to all mankind.” Justification of this clause, so far-reaching from the European viewpoint, emphasized its significance as a protest and historical correction. Fanaticism and the ambitions of weak and evil priests and princes had brought suffering to the human race; hence, with this revolutionary step, the legislators of New York State were acting according to rational liberty, which required the banishment of political tyranny and defense against spiritual oppression and intolerance. In Virginia in 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a law, which was ratified six years later, stating that everyone was free to declare and hold their own opinions on religion and that this would in no way restrict, augment, or influence their role as citizens. In other states, the political equality of the Jews was not yet self-evident, and some legislators struggled to place a Christian stamp on politics. As Hasia Diner has written, “The other states offered the Jews less than full rights. The remaining offered what amounted to a hodgepodge of inconsistencies and ambiguities. . . . But the total separation of full rights and religion involved a long, drawn-out process.”42 From Berlin, Moses Mendelssohn followed events across the Atlantic with intensity. As one who had harbored the humanistic dream of religious toleration and who regarded “religious rule” as catastrophic, he hoped that the new message would at least emerge from there.43 Meanwhile, after responding to the request of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin community to intervene and prevent the enforcement of the decree to delay burial, he played the role of mediator between the Jews and the state in at least four other cases during the 1770s. In all of them, Mendelssohn employed his abilities as a scholar and his expertise in Judaism, and in two of them, he demanded the cessation of oppression and discrimination against the Jews in the name of humanistic principles. As ordered by the Prussian government, Mendelssohn worked in close cooperation for a number of years with the rabbi of the Berlin community, Zevi Hirsch Levin, to prepare a guide in German to Jewish property law. This was another step taken by the centralized state in its policy toward the Jewish minority; on the

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one hand, they deprived the Jewish religious courts of authority and weakened autonomy, but on the other hand, Jewish law was considered in the general courts. The guide, which enabled jurists to learn Jewish Halakha, appeared in 1778. Entitled Jewish Law on Inheritance, Guardianship, Wills, Marriage and Divorce, it was reprinted many times. Mendelssohn accepted the government’s order and in effect composed a Halakhic work based on the Shulh.an ‘arukh for use by the state, but he also explained that it was impossible to include Halakha in general legal proceedings unless the Jews took part. The German handbook could not, he claimed, give a full answer, because only those who know the sources of Halakha in the Talmud and who are in full command of Hebrew can get to the bottom of the Halakha and apply it in various instances.44 A few months before his trip to Königsberg, he responded to a request from that community and wrote a detailed memorandum on a subject that had perturbed the local Jews. At the beginning of the century, an edict had been promulgated requiring them to appoint a special inspector, whose job would be to prevent calumny against Christianity in the synagogue during the ‘aleinu leshabeah. (we must praise) prayer. Upon the demand of the inspector, Georg David Kypke, a professor of Eastern languages, to extend the inspector’s authority and preserve his status, a special investigative committee was formed. Mendelssohn’s memorandum showing that apprehension regarding ‘aleinu leshabeah. was groundless, since it was an ancient prayer composed before the advent of Christianity, was taken into consideration. In the final decision (July 6, 1778), the humiliating supervision of the synagogue on the part of the state was abolished, along with the post of inspector.45 An article that appeared in the newspaper published by Friedrich Nicolai, one of the leaders of the Berlin Enlightenment, stated briefly that the edict requiring close supervision of religious ritual such as that issued by Friedrich I more than seventy years earlier no longer had a place in Prussia: “What is called supervision of Judaism has ended with Kypke . . . and the salary that the inspector used to receive will be diverted to better purpose.”46 Isaac Euchel, Mendelssohn’s biographer, attributed a key role to him in the successful intercession to put an end to the blood libels in Poland. Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) brought Mendelssohn news from the press: “It was written that two Jews were arrested in the city of Warsaw for the blood libel.” Satanow was shocked and fainted: “How long will we be like sheep brought to slaughter, and he said to the rabbi [Mendelssohn], give us advice, perhaps we can be useful.” Indeed, in the spring of 1774, thirteen Jews were arrested and accused of kidnapping and murdering a three-year-old girl in the village of Grabie, in the Mazovia district. They were interrogated under torture and placed on trial

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in Warsaw. Mendelssohn convened an urgent meeting with the heads of the Berlin community, and they sent “a letter in the French language to one of the ministers of Poland,” asking him to intervene “lest innocent blood be shed in your country.” With the influence of petitions sent to the court and an effective defense, they were cleared of the accusation (June 20, 1775). It cannot be known whether the letter from Berlin had any effect or influenced “the laws of Poland, that it should no longer be heard that the Jews need blood.” Mendelssohn himself attributed the outcome both to successful intercession and to the internalization of humane values: “Only a few years ago this deed [the blood libel] arose again in the vicinity of Warsaw, too, were it not for the wise king and a few enlightened nobles, who halted the trial in that place, so that the Jews could prove the falsehood of the accusation.”47 Mendelssohn had clear and immediate influence on the fate of five hundred Jews who lived in Switzerland at the time, almost all of them in the villages of Langenau and Endingen, in the canton of Aargau, near the German border. They were mainly horse traders, prayed in two synagogues, and were buried in a joint cemetery. Their presence was precarious. Every few years, they were required to renew the letters of protection they had received, and in the 1770s, pressure increased to prevent the growth of the communities by restricting the right to marry.48 For them as well, the person to be addressed in their time of distress in response to the demands of the government was the philosopher from Berlin, who, because of his public status, acquired the unofficial role of chief Jewish intercessor. “Worthy friend of humanity,” Mendelssohn wrote to Lavater in Zurich on April 14, 1775, “[I wish to place on your doorstep] a matter that is not foreign to you, because it touches on human beings.” At this time, Mendelssohn ignored the earlier bitterness between them, because he believed that Lavater was capable of alleviating the pressure on the Jews of Switzerland. He added that he was not closely acquainted with the two small communities, but he could imagine their miserable condition, “considering the general attitude toward the members of my people, for almost everywhere they are looked upon as foreign on God’s earth.” In the name of friendship, Mendelssohn wrote—an appeal that could sound rather ironic or even hypocritical, given the vehement dispute between them—and especially in the name of their shared values, “I implore you, worthy friend of humanity, to understand the plight of these oppressed people, and that with your concern and your powers of persuasion, you can assure that they might enjoy at least their former liberties.”49 This outcry, which flooded Mendelssohn once again with feelings of shame, might have sounded familiar to Lavater. Five years earlier, when Mendelssohn responded to Lavater’s challenge to consider conversion, he commented to him,

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with the same feeling of mixed insult and anger, that Zurich was closed to a man like him only because he was circumcised, and thus a civil chasm yawned between them. Apparently Lavater did intervene and helped avert the restrictions imposed by Switzerland. Thus, Mendelssohn exploited his connections to play an important role as an intermediary in circumstances in which the state was laying its heavy, controlling hand on the Jewish minority. In the autumn of 1777, the Dresden community sent a similar cry of distress to him. Half of the Jews of the city were in danger of expulsion because they couldn’t afford the payments demanded as a condition for registry as residents. Mendelssohn was asked to rescue them by addressing the heads of the government in Saxony: “Our eyes are raised to you,” for “wisdom has chosen you to raise you up as a banner to the nations.” In emotional turmoil (“I write to you with a bitter spirit . . . with great panic and fear, which has fallen upon me”), he addressed a senior counselor, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Ferber (1732–1800), whom he knew to be a reform-minded statesman, and he explained that the situation was disastrous. Where could the miserable people go, with their wives and children, and what would they do without water, heat, and a roof over their heads? For them, expulsion meant absolute removal from the face of the earth, and the actions of the authorities were shameful: “Must innocent people suffer such severe punishments only because they were committed to a different faith and had simply sunk into poverty because of bad luck?”50 This time, as well, his response was very emotional and formulated as a cry of protest against the blow to tolerance, justice, and human dignity, and this time, too, the state relented, and the danger of expulsion was averted. The purpose of these letters of intercession was to arouse identification with the suffering of others, and one might say that it was a politics of shame. To apply Lynn Hunt’s argument that the roots of human rights lie in the emotional change that took place in the eighteenth century regarding human suffering and the awakening of recognition of individual autonomy, in order for the rights of Jews to be selfevident, like those inscribed in the American Declaration of Independence, it was necessary to demonstrate the humanity of the Jews. When Mendelssohn called attention to the personal suffering caused by civil oppression, fear of bloodshed, expulsion, and restrictions on livelihood and marriage, he was preparing the hearts of his addressees to accept his belief that the rights of the Jews were inevitable, as in the important historical change that Hunt points to: “Changes in reactions to other people’s bodies and selves provided critical support for the new secular grounding of political authority.”51 In an emotional letter (May 17, 1779) to a friend in high society, Luisa Mejer (1746–1786) praised Lessing’s new play, Nathan the Wise, and shared

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her experience of reading with her. “I would like to fall at the feet of the Jew, Nathan,” wrote Mejer, who came from a family of the bourgeois, cultured elite in Hanover, adding, “Lessing’s ideal is to see all the religions unite.” But don’t tell everyone, she warned, “so that the orthodox patriarchs won’t scream.” In her diary, Elisa von Recke (1754–1833), a writer, poet, and young, independent woman of culture from Mitau, in Kurland, also attributed redemptive significance to Nathan the Wise. The play restored balance in the European world, which appeared to be swept away by charlatans, who boasted of supernatural powers. She herself had been captivated by “the notorious Cagliostro,” but she had recovered and even wrote a work revealing him as a fraud.52 Nathan the Wise was regarded as subversive immediately after its publication in Berlin in the spring of 1779. The play merely tightened the siege around Lessing, who was living in Wolfenbüttel at the time. During the 1770s, he published a series of theological works as “Fragments,” which marked him as a blasphemer in the eyes of many. Nathan the Wise was taken to be yet another provocative step in his critique of Christianity. The play was banned in Vienna, theologians wrote against it, friends distanced themselves from Lessing and shunned him, and even uneducated people believed he had brought shame upon religion. Mendelssohn, who had followed every stage in the play’s publication, wrote that the price Lessing paid for writing Nathan the Wise was great, and his last days, until his death only about a year and a half later, were very bitter. He felt miserable and persecuted.53 In spite of the negative reactions, the words of Nathan the Wise continued to reverberate for generations, not only as a classic work of the German Enlightenment but also as the most refined expression of the struggle for religious tolerance. Lessing called his new play a “theological comedy,” intentionally provoking those who persecuted him, and he assumed that in the foreseeable future, the play would not be produced anywhere in Germany. Exactly thirty years after surprising the public with his play The Jews, declaring his shame in the voice of “the Baron” because of the persecution of the Jews, Lessing published another play; this one sought to bring down the barriers between religions and establish a pluralistic society. The age of competition for precedence and truth between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam had come to an end. There was no longer any justification for linking civil status to religious affiliation. As if in response to the tense discourse of the 1770s between reformers and conservatives, this play also demanded sensitive heedfulness to the suffering of the Jews.54 Lessing drew inspiration for the kernel of the plot from “Melchizedek the Jew, With a Story of Three Rings, Escapeth a Parlous Snare Set for Him by Saladin,” a story in Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century work, The Decameron.

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Melchizedek tells the fable of the three identical rings and the impossibility of knowing which one is authentic in answer to a question by the Sultan Saladin, “Which of the three religions appears true to you?”55 Lessing’s play is set in Jerusalem in 1192. Along with the Jew (a successful merchant, outstanding in wisdom and humanity) and the Sultan, a young German also appears, a member of the Templar order of Crusaders who had risked his life to save Recha, Nathan’s daughter, from a fire. By means of Nathan, Lessing used the fable of the rings to convey an even more radical idea, which can be interpreted as a deist critique of all revealed religions. The true ring doesn’t exist at all: “Ye’re all deceived deceivers, / None of your rings is true. The real ring / Perhaps is gone. To hide or to supply / Its loss, your father ordered three for one.” The Sultan also proves to be tolerant and believes that religion is only a person’s outer shell: “As Mussulman or Christian, in a turban / Or a white mantle—I have never wished / To see the same bark grow about all trees.” The subversive and emotional declaration of the Christian Templar, who has befriended Nathan, the Jew, is highly appropriate and complements the doctrine of tolerance: “Where, when, has e’er the pious rage / To own the better god—on the whole world / To force this better, as the best of all— / Shown itself more, and in a blacker form, / Than here, than now?”56 Only in the fourth of the five acts does Lessing reveal that Nathan is a survivor from horrible pogroms whose burden of suffering is too heavy to bear, and yet, despite his blood accounting with Christian violence, he rises above himself and displays humane compassion, arousing the reader’s astonished admiration. Nathan tells the Friar: “The Christians murdered every Jew in Gath, / Woman and child; that among these, my wife / With seven hopeful sons were found, who all / Beneath my brother’s roof which they had fled to, / Were burnt alive.” But he did not hesitate when he was asked to spare a Christian baby girl and adopt her. Only the Christian Patriarch clung to religious zeal, lacking compassion. When he learns that Recha, Nathan’s daughter, was born a Christian, he shouts, “If a Jew shall to apostacy / Seduce a Christian, he shall die by fire.” When he hears that Nathan has educated his daughter in natural, rational religion, he loses all control and cries out: “The Jew is to be burnt— / And for this very reason would deserve / To be thrice burnt. How, let a child grow up / Without a faith?” Echoing, as it were, the confrontation between emperor Joseph II and his mother on the consequences of the policy of tolerance, the patriarch cannot imagine a state that does not represent one of the religions. He explains to the Sultan that a government indifferent to the religious affiliation of its subjects

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is perilous, because “All civic bonds divide, / Like flax fire-touched, where subjects don’t believe.”57 The patriarch’s words display a negative image of Lessing’s new message. The play, which begins with confrontation and competition, ends with a harmonious denouement. Quite astonishingly, Saladin, Recha, and the Templar discover they are related to one another, and Nathan (who is now the outsider) ties the threads together, making possible the literary fantasy of the embrace of the three religions. In fact, Lessing’s doctrine of tolerance was far more complex than that utopia. It is no coincidence that Nathan hasn’t educated Recha in Judaism, and there is no hint in the play that he himself observes the laws and customs of the Jews. In this respect, the hero of the play is a non-Jewish Jew, quite distant from the figure of Mendelssohn, though his contemporaries and succeeding generations were so convinced that he was a source of inspiration for Nathan. Lessing’s theological-philosophical work, The Education of the Human Race, appeared close to the time of writing the play (1777), and it was completed immediately afterward (1780). It accorded to Judaism (“the Old Covenant”) merely a transient role on the stage of history. But every Primer is only for a certain age. To delay the child, that has outgrown it, longer in it than it was intended for, is hurtful. For to be able to do this in a way in any sort profitable, you must insert into it more than there is really in it, and extract from it more than it can contain. You must . . . press too much upon words. This gives the child a petty, crooked, hair splitting understanding; it makes him full of mysteries, superstitions. . . . A Better Instructor must come and tear the exhausted Primer from the child’s hands. Christ came!

It was impossible to mistake the remnants of the Christian critique, but the future, “the time of a new eternal Gospel,” will come to a post-religious world, where natural reason and inner morality will no longer need the primes of Judaism and Christianity.58 Because of this deist belief, in Nathan the Wise, Lessing was able to present religious tolerance as natural, rational, ethical, and self-evident, and therefore, Nathan’s statement to the Templar had far-reaching political significance: “We must be friend! – Disdain my folk, as much, / As ever you will. For neither one has chosen / His folk. Are we our Folk? What is a folk? / Are Jews and Christians soonr Jew and Christian than man?” This question, which had reverberated from the beginning of the eighteenth century, now became particularly urgent. The answer, in the spirit of the politics of individualism, rejects collective, national-religious identity in favor of humanistic values. It supports and

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justifies the emancipation of groups subject to discrimination and exclusion because of collective labels as other and different, and it serves as a counterpoise to suspicion and hostility toward the Jews, such as that expressed by Maria Theresa (“the minds of decent people are revolted by them”). In lines that summarize the message of the entire play, the young Templar declares to Nathan, with excitement: “I beg you Nathan! / Conjure you by the foremost bonds of nature! / Give not precedence to much later ties! / Suffice it just to be a man!”59 To complicate the historical context even further, one cannot ignore the fact that the readers of Nathan the Wise did not judge it in the same way. For example, although Kant fostered Jewish students and greatly admired Mendelssohn, he thought the play had no literary value, or, as he explained to a friend, he “couldn’t stand a protagonist that belonged to that nation.”60

“Th e Fir st Step towa r d Cu lt u r e”: Th e M a sk i li m In the 1770s, just when new trends were encouraging new thinking about the Jews, the project of internal reform was inaugurated among them. The aspiration to repair flaws in their culture and society led the Jews of Europe to translate protest and criticism, which had hitherto been expressed mainly in literature, into the first steps in what they took to be a practical process of improvement. Naphtali Herz Wessely, the poet, cultivator of the Hebrew language, and pioneer in the modernization of education, formulated the goal of the reformist tendency with the very concrete images of curing the Jewish body: he wished to bring a remedy and cure to the “malady of my nation.”61 The significance of the inner reform quickly proved to be revolutionary in every sense. One of these reformers was David Atias, a native of Sarajevo who lived in Livorno. He wrote an exceptional book in Ladino, La guerta de oro (The Golden Garden, 1778), addressed to the Sephardi Jews in the communities of the Ottoman Empire, in the name of the younger generation, who, he said, were tired of outdated Torah knowledge and whose souls yearned for new worlds. Like Isaac Wetzlar, from midcentury Germany, Atias was a merchant who circumvented the rabbinical elite, proposed a new library of history, geography, and science, and advocated the study of modern languages and the acquisition of an education useful for practical life. One must not count on luck, he asserted. It was necessary to learn a profession and be useful to society and the world. He, too, was ashamed of the narrow boundaries of Jewish culture and protested against denying Jews new information. The failure of intellectuals, he believed, was that they did not understand that the new generation was living in a different epoch, and they did nothing to redeem them

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from ignorance, to open their eyes to new thinking, and to improve their low image in the eyes of non-Jews.62 Atias’s voice and his critique of the Sephardi communities in the Muslim East did not reverberate widely, but the Maskilim in Central and Eastern Europe, who began to advocate reforms with similar consciousness and identical arguments, were already self-aware citizens of the new age. Their reforms would give rise to a new elite, which sought to guide the entire community. It would make an effort to change the structure of the knowledge essential to the Jews, to refashion the image of the Jews, and to propose the identity card of the modern Jew, who, along with loyalty to the tradition and the affinity group, could take on the characteristics of “a man,” according to the humanistic standards of the Enlightenment. As we have seen, the age of criticism of the Jews in Europe awakened in earlier decades of the eighteenth century, but it did not begin clearly until the 1770s, with several efforts to make a real change. An exceptional encounter took place on the threshold of the 1780s among more than five hundred people, almost all of them Jews, from the region between Denmark, Holland, England, France, Italy, East Prussia, Lithuania, and White Russia. For example, what brought together wealthy Jews from Berlin, Daniel Itzig and the sons of Veitel Ephraim and the Christian professor Tychsen of Bützow; “the woman Fagelchi Arnstein” of Vienna (Fanny von Arnstein, 1758–1818, a member of the Itzig family and the wife of the banker Nathan); Christian VII of Denmark, his prime minister, Guldberg, and his counselor, August Hennings of Copenhagen, along with well-connected and wealthy members of the community there, including the merchant Moses Melkhert (Moses Melchior, 1736–1817); and Moshe Fürst, Mendelssohn’s son-in-law? And what Berr of Strasbourg, who had just become a French citizen; Rabbi Eliezer of Nesvizh, Maimon’s home city; Michael, the physician of Padua; Mendel Hamburg of London; and “the woman, Golda Shiskat of Vilna,” had in common? It was not their personal acquaintance, but their desire to contribute money to one of the greatest projects of cultural reform of the Jews of Europe. They met on the pan-European list of subscribers that had been assembled in 1778 and appeared with the publication of the Five Books of Moses in Netivot hashalom, a translation of the Torah into German by Moses Mendelssohn; a project that included a commentary in which five more enthusiastic scholars took part. Together the subscribers committed themselves to purchasing about 750 copies, thus supporting the production of a complex and expensive literary enterprise, which sought to advance far-reaching goals. Unlike earlier initiatives, such as the printing of the Talmud at the beginning of the century, which had been funded by the court Jew, Brand Lehmann, this

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time the necessary funds were raised by an open appeal to anyone who was interested and with the support of a varied group. Mainly the list represented the Jewish elite (men, but also a few women) in cities like Berlin, Königsberg, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Copenhagen, but it also included several rabbis, royal libraries, and Jews from small communities. The central—if not the primary— place was filled by the early Maskil and book collector Solomon Dubno in the writing and managing of the project, called “The Biur,” the name of the commentary on the Pentateuch. More than fifty men from Poland and White Russia also joined. Dubno himself came from Volhynia. He had arrived in Berlin from the circle of early Maskilim in Amsterdam to serve as the private tutor to Mendelssohn’s son, Joseph, as we have seen; thereby, for a moment he blurred the cultural boundary between East and West, which, was then beginning to be emphasized as separating the old from the new.63 Netivot hashalom was not at all a traditional work whose place was in the Torah library. Although it was of course a sacred text, and although the commentary drew on the classic Jewish commentators on the Bible and did not grant entry to Bible criticism, it was nevertheless a work of cultural reform in which the rabbinic elite took no part. Dubno pointed this out in the prospectus, ‘Alim litrufa (Medicinal Herbs), where he presented the German translation of the Torah as a response to an educational challenge: “Now what can we do for the children, the sons of Israel, who wander about and seek the words of the Lord, to understand the books of the Bible, and to taste its eloquence in the language they are used to—and they can’t find it?” In the new circumstances of the spread of German among the Jews and the decline in knowledge of Hebrew and the use of Yiddish, and in fear lest they fill in the gap with the German Christian translation of the Bible, Mendelssohn was determined to repair the damage. According to Dubno: “All of these things were seen by the eye of the wise and famous rabbi Moses of Dessau, may his light shine . . . and he had compassion for his nation and set his heart upon translating the five books of Moses into the Ashkenazi language, very pure and excellent, the literal meaning with commentary.”64 In answer to the question of why he had not asked for the authorization of rabbis and not sought an approbation from Rabbi Ezekiel Landau of Prague, whom many viewed as the most senior member of the rabbinical elite, Mendelssohn himself shed light on his purpose when he emphasized the distance of his new work from the Torah library and his independence as a scholar who did not belong to the elite. While clarifying that he did not wish “to honor himself against the great men of the country, men of renown,” or to belittle them, “we have never seen that the wise men of the generation and the rabbis of the

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country set their minds to investigate a book written in Judeo-German [German in Hebrew characters] and to agree to its publication or protest against those involved in it.” This removal of the translation of the Torah from the realm of rabbinical culture implied a declaration of independence and cultural separation between sacred and secular, which had inestimable modern significance.65 Furthermore, in a letter to Hennings in Copenhagen, he confessed that Netivot hashalom sought to achieve a higher, reformist purpose: “This is the first step toward culture, from which, most regrettably, my nation is so very distant that one might despair of the possibility of making an improvement.”66 It is difficult to know exactly what culture he had in mind, but one may assume that it lies beyond the realm of Torah, which is unique to the Jews. Even more important was Mendelssohn’s choice of the German word for improvement, Verbesserung, which can be deciphered as a code word for the advocates of reform. In the new dictionary of the Enlightenment, this word joined its French sister, Régénération, which appeared in the 1770s and, during the years of the revolution, referred to a comprehensive move to reform society with the inspiration of reason and, by means of rehabilitation, to fulfill the dream of creating people who shed the flaws of the patriarchal tradition and shake off the errors of the past, preparing themselves for a new age.67 Even those who were not familiar with the dictionary of the Enlightenment identified Netivot hashalom with the possibility of reform, as can be seen in a letter of support for the project written by Rabbi Shaul Levin (1740–1794), the son of Rabbi Levin, who served as the rabbi of Berlin after leaving London and was himself the rabbi of Frankfort on the Oder. In the following decade, Levin was to emerge as one of the most cynical and fierce critics of rabbinical culture. Something of his later critique is expressed in his hope that the translation and commentary would offer a solution to the low level of teachers, whose “minds are ruined” and whose ignorance of languages is abysmal, and cover up the shame “of revealing the disgrace of the Jews among the nations, who mock us, seeing our teachers of Bible; for not only is the book of the Torah of God too deep and obscure for them, but their knowledge of the language of the country and the words that would be useful to them is atrocious.”68 No less important was Wessely’s enthusiasm, expressed in the praise he showered upon Mendelssohn and Dubno in Mehalel re’a (Praise of a Friend) after the prospectus came his way. A few years later, Wessely himself became the focus of controversy about modern education and was forced to repel the vehement attacks of furious conservatives. Already, in late 1778, in a single, double-columned page, he concentrated the gravest criticism so far voiced among the Jews against those who held the monopoly over knowledge and

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education of the younger generation. He painted an alarming, gloomy picture. Irresponsible parents and unqualified teachers joined together in prolonged neglect. The failure was unforgivable, beginning when children of four and five were placed “under teachers to study Torah, without paying attention to whether they speak clearly or awkwardly and indistinctly.” Before the Torah was learned properly, the teachers went on to the Oral Law, but how could a child understand Talmudic arguments about marriage and divorce “before the lad knows about relations between males and females”? Wessely warned that the alienation of those who had received traditional education was so great that it could cause them to abandon Judaism: “For the most part, when they grew up, they will quickly throw off the yoke of Talmud, and, when they turn away from it, nothing will remain with them, not the Torah, not the foundations of the Jewish faith, not knowledge, and not moral lessons, not civility, and they will not even know how to read Hebrew or understand the prayers they recite daily.” In light of this harsh critique and the prospects for improvement, Netivot hashalom seemed like a splendid turning point to Wessely, as well.69 The rumors that reached Mendelssohn about the attacks against Netivot hashalom by the rabbinical elite even before the first volume left the printing press were disturbing. As short item in the Hamburg newspaper reported that “the chief rabbi here [in Altona] has proclaimed excommunication against all the Jews who read the translation of the Torah written in Berlin by Moses Mendelssohn.”70 This item was probably inaccurate, though it is quite possible that listing the king of Denmark among the supporters of the new edition of the Torah is what deterred Rabbi Raphael Cohen, who had served as a rabbi in several communities in Poland before reaching northern Germany as the rabbi of the combined community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek. Rabbi Cohen was very worried about what he identified as erosion of the authority of the rabbinical leadership, and he was on the watch against local reformist tendencies. Mendelssohn chose not to fight back (“I do not intend to stand up to them or mock them,” he wrote to Hennings), but he understood very well the meaning of the confrontation between himself and “my rabbis.” As Jacob Katz explained it, the negative reaction to the Bible that was about to appear in Berlin was not based on criticism of the translation or the commentary. With their sharp senses, those faithful to the religious tradition (who were already called “orthodox” by the end of the century) identified the dangerous innovation: “The opponents had no need to condemn the content. They condemned it because of the German language and the breaking through of the barriers of cultural separation that it entailed.”71 Mendelssohn’s German translation of the Pentateuch soon became a textbook in modern Jewish schools. The first of these was established in Berlin

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just when the pamphlet ‘Alim letrufa began to enlist subscribers for Netivot hashalom. The promoter of this educational reform was David Friedländer (1750– 1834), whom Mendelssohn mentioned in the heading of the list of subscribers as one of his main assistants. Friedländer was an energetic young man, born to a family at the top of the wealthy elite in Prussia. He was only twenty-eight when, in cooperation with his brother-in-law, Daniel Itzig, he founded H.evrat H.inukh Ne’arim (Society for the Education of Youth). Although it was of modest extent and in its first years it merely supplemented the Talmud Torah. The number of students did not exceed a few dozen, and those who attended were mainly the children of poor families who could not afford private tutors. H.inukh Ne’arim— or, as it was known in German, the Freischule—did not charge tuition. In 1778, the transition was made from the Talmud Torah, which, for generations in Ashkenazi society, had inculcated the religious tradition, to schools that envisioned preparing Jewish graduates to be at home in Europe with respect to the language and basic knowledge.72 In one of their letters to the king of Prussia, Friedländer and Itzig wrote that their hope was to educate the Jews “to be useful members of the state” and “to make the Jews cultivated people.”73 The circles of Maskilim and wealthy notables made the Berlin community into the preferred destination of those whose hearts throbbed with hope to influence their brethren with books that would open new worlds for them. For example, when Satanow arrived in Berlin from Poland in 1772, he represented the enthusiastic and curious cultural migrants like Dubno and Maimon, who dreamed of achieving their ambitions in the desired city. In his self-image, Satanow, a talented scholar whose thirst for knowledge was insatiable, was also no less than a heroic warrior who sacrificed everything dear to him and devoted his soul to study and to the circulation of his knowledge in print: “I am the youngest of the young of the lovers of wisdom, my desire is greater than my reach, and in my love of wisdom, I deprive my soul of all good things. I left my home and abandoned my estate, my sons and my daughters are in a distant land, 140 miles from me. My wife is in a country I never knew and I dwell in exile in a foreign land.” While he was a sort of monk and suffered from difficult circumstances, he also renounced the pleasures of life voluntarily, because his love of wisdom overcame all else. However, Satanow also exploited every avenue of practical life in order to succeed. In Berlin, he was sponsored by the Itzig family, supported himself as a book dealer, traveled to fairs, and raised money to publish his books. In the following decade, he became one of the most active members of the organized circle of Maskilim in Prussia.74 As a poet and Maskil who captivated readers with his rhymes in the Hebrew language, Wessely occupied a special place as the man whose approbation

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offered backing for various reformers—approbation that was needed for the new library along with the approbation of rabbis, or as a substitute for it. He proclaimed Berlin as the spearhead of the Jewish renaissance. The community, which he joined only in 1774 and where he was employed by the Ephraim family, stood out, in his opinion, because of the willingness of the wealthy to support scholars and thus to make the cultural awakening possible: “Your pleasant heavens will drip with water, Berlin, with your dew, those who sleep in the dust will rouse, the wise of heart will be your eyes.” Wessely’s words of praise welcomed another scholar from Poland, who, like Satanow, Dubno, and Maimon, aspired for knowledge and shared in their battle against the image of the Jews as excluded from all the sciences, and, therefore, marginal and inferior. This time the visitor to Berlin was one of the outstanding members of the rabbinical elite in White Russia and Lithuania. Baruch Schick of Shklov (1744–1808) was a member of a well-connected rabbinical family. He published two science books in Berlin. The first was a double book—his translation of a work on astronomy (‘Amudei hashamayim [The Pillars of the Heavens]) and on anatomy and physiology (Tiferet haadam [The Glory of Man]). The second was taken from a manuscript on astronomy and the laws of blessing the new moon (Yesod ‘olam [The Foundation of the World]) by Isaac Israeli ben Joseph, a fourteenth-century scholar. Wessely also encouraged him: “Arise, Baruch! Plow your earth, bring forth produce from the garden of your intellect.” His books would contribute to the struggle against “fools who pursue vanity, in whose eyes a man of intelligence is as though lost.” As the self-appointed leader of this circle of Maskilim in Berlin, he included Schick among those “companions of the wise and knowers of friendship.” In the introductions to his books, Schick formulated the worldview of the reformers, complaining about neglect of the sciences and proclaiming the great mission of resolving the crisis: “Behold, since we went into exile, wisdom has been lost from its sons and understanding is hidden from its wise men, the crown has fallen from our head, and no one is aroused to hold it, for darkness covers the earth, bitter for wisdom and those who study it and knock at its doors.” Those who signed in advance among the economic elite, scholars, and intellectuals supporting Schick’s books reinforced his personal confidence and encouraged him to continue his life’s work.75 As with Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, various threads were spun around the various science books that Schick published, creating broad circles of cultural encounter. A quotation from a manuscript of Luzzatto’s shows the surprising influence of the Kabbalah on Schick’s conception of science. It also reveals an exposure to scientific and Kabbalistic knowledge through the intermediary of Yekutiel Gordon, who returned from Luzzatto’s group in Italy to Lithuania

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and White Russia. Before continuing his journey to Western Europe, in the winter of 1778, Schick went to Vilna and met with the authoritative religious leader, “the rabbi, the beacon, the great scholar . . . the light of the eyes of the exile and the famous righteous man, his honor our teacher and rabbi, rabbi Elijah.” He reported that the Gaon instructed him to translate science books, “to remove what they swallowed from their mouths, and many will wander, and you will increase knowledge among our people of Israel.” In the manuscript of his book, Euclid, in which he reports about this meeting, another quotation from his conversation with the Gaon appears. A fear is expressed that attraction to science will lead to transgressing the boundaries of the culture, so that “they may not need another nation to learn from, and they may not mingle with the gentiles.” Removal of this sentence from the printed version shows that Schick, who boasted of the support from the famous scholar, did not identify with his conservative approach. With a sense of mission, he continued to enlist subscribers and approbations for his forthcoming books. Several of the wealthy members of the Copenhagen community also contributed to the publication of his books, just as they supported Netivot hashalom, and in 1779, he had already reached Holl. In the following year, his geometry book, Euclid, was published in The Hague. In the introduction, Schick described his opponents in even stronger language: “They call wise people stupid and foolish . . . to crush them with the illness of heresy and skepticism.” This time he also accused the Hasidim of thwarting the revival of science. Through the intermediary of Schick, some of the echoes of the dispute against the Hasidim were heard for the first time in Western Europe: “The hypocrites who garb themselves in righteous and modest dress of rabbis, and among them they place their ambush, suddenly to pounce on the innocent from hiding.” Though in their own eyes they are “observers of the religion, to avoid violating the law,” in fact they are sowing division: “Alas! For fools such as they, why are they living, to diminish the Torah and increase quarrels among the Jews. . . . Their wickedness is greater than the wickedness of Korah, who denied the Torah of Moses.” Schick warned his readers: “These people wear the garb of the pious and modest and deceive the public into listening to them . . . and they set their heart to desecrate the Name and honor of the Torah, which is desecrated among the gentiles.”76

“Those W ick ed One s!”: Th e Fe a r of th e Gua r di a ns at th e Gate In parallel with these challenges and disputes, for the eighth straight decade, another fault line continued to wind through the Jewish biography of the

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eighteenth century: the tension between autonomous Jews and their aspiration for liberation from restrictions and the rabbinical and communal elite, who held the reins of the religious and social norms. The guardians at the gate and the supervisors of religion and society sharpened their sensitivity toward those they regarded as breaking down fences, and they strove to tighten discipline by the traditional means of Halakhic rulings and community regulations. As in the past, what most disturbed them was violation of discipline in relations between men and women—what they interpreted as erosion of control over Jewish sexuality. In 1777, for example, Rabbi Landau was asked whether a man of priestly lineage who had married a non-Jewish woman in India in a Christian ceremony but then abandoned her and repented was permitted to stand before the congregation in the synagogue and participate in the priestly blessing. Rabbi Meshulam Zalman of Fürth went deeply into the tormented life of “the prostitute, Klerchen,” from a small village in the duchy of Lippe, to rule as to whether the son she bore in 1773 was a mamzer, the product of a forbidden sexual act, while she was still married and whether this servant woman “was a whore in her wanton childhood,” so that her testimony could not be believed. Isaac Lazarus, a married man and father, lived in London with Sara Gardiner, his Christian mistress, until he was convicted of theft in 1773 and punished by deportation.77 Regulations and proclamations continued to call for insistence on separation of the genders. Section 16 of the bylaws of the community of Aschaffenburg of 1774 threatens to impose a monetary fine, for “from today on it will be forbidden for men and women or maidens to play on Hanukkah and Purim and at weddings and throughout the year at any type of game, be it what it may, because play and frivolity make people used [to fornication].”78 The register of the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam preserves an edict (dated 1776) that warns: “Men, not even bachelors, must not dance with married women, not even a husband with his wife, whether at weddings or in other places.”79 In The Hague, an “impure incident” was recorded: “Of the girls of the people of our community, may it be preserved, two were found in the city, who had become prostitutes.” The younger one became pregnant while unmarried. They pinned the blame on the women, “those wicked ones” who mislead “Jewish young men” and should be expelled, “so that there shall not be a prostitute among the daughters of Israel, perish the thought.”80 As we have seen, servant women were relegated to the lowest rung in the social ladder, and they were blamed for sexual seduction of the men in the houses where they were employed. However, during this decade, some servant women fought back in the general and rabbinical courts against the injustice done to

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them. For example, Särle, from the village of Steinbiedersdorf in the German part of Lorraine, did not accept her dismissal and violent expulsion from the home of wealthy widow Perle Levi one Friday evening in 1774. She went to court and demanded payment of her salary and the return of her belongings. An upper-class woman had apparently intended to silence an inferior servant woman with a false accusation of theft, after Perle pregnant. In another case that came to light in that region three years later, it became clear to the authorities that a servant woman, Zarle, had sexual relations with her employer, Feist Levi, one of the heads of the Jewish community and Perle’s brother, and he wanted her to have an abortion.81 Women lodged about a quarter of the suits in the rabbinical court of Metz during the 1770s and 1780s. Many of them were servant women who made their injured voices heard before the religious judges as well as in the general French courts. The lay leaders of Metz, the largest community in France, which numbered about three thousand Jews, continued to warn against breaks in the fences and did all they could to impose discipline. The Metz regulations reflected a deep feeling of panic about those who flouted the instructions of the gatekeepers. Young men and women wanted to amuse themselves, dress fashionably, and mainly behave freely toward one another, whereas the regulations went so far as to demand separation of the genders by setting different days for visits to the cemetery and forbidding engaged couples from meeting in the evening. In 1776, the community council was constrained to admit that even after seven years had passed since the institution of these detailed regulations, not only had nothing changed, but contempt for the authority of the leadership had only increased.82 When Torah scholar Samson Friedburg encountered the Jewish community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, his conservative worldview was shocked. His revulsion at what he interpreted as a huge trend of rejection of the commandments and intentional defiance of all religious supervision shows how much fashionable Jews had become a conspicuous and common phenomenon in some of the cities of Western and Central Europe. Toward the end of the 1770s, with literary talent and an excellent command of Hebrew, Friedburg wrote several stinging satires that documented the desire of the affluent bourgeois class to exploit the possibilities of big cities and to use their wealth to purchase everything needed to live a comfortable life of freedom and pleasure. With apprehension, he also pointed a finger at the young men and women who challenged the authority of the rabbinical elite to rule over them. Like ‘Olam h.adash, by Israel Ben Issachar Baer of Amsterdam, Friedburg’s satires condemning religious permissiveness remained

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in manuscript and had only marginal influence. Nevertheless, as historical documents they enable us to know, even though the description is distorted and tendentious, how processes that had been observable for decades had matured—the adaptation to fashions in entertainment, dress, hairstyles, and language; the disregard for the restrictions of relations between the sexes; the indifference to the precepts of Halakha; and the diminishment of the status of Torah scholars. As a religious inspector facing these processes, he was especially worried by the blurring of the boundaries between Jews and nonJews. “Today there are found some wealthy people who conduct themselves according to the laws of the gentiles in their manners and dress. People sit and eat at their table with their heads bare and speak in the language of the non-Jew,” Friedburg warned in his Viquah. hasheratsim (The Dispute of Crawling Things, 1779). With irony, in Shemesh hasharon (The Sun of the Sharon), he quoted what people said: “We’re going among non-Jews, and we have to beautify ourselves, so no hair will be seen on our face, and we will also cut the beard, and then among the gentiles they will say that we are handsome and they will associate with us.”83 Awareness of change was especially sensitive. Immediately after his appointment to the rabbinate of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, Raphael Cohen exhorted the men of his congregation not to shave off their beards. Like Friedburg, a member of his community, this was an infraction in his eyes, and he ruled that every married man was required to grow at least a symbolic beard half an inch wide. As if in direct response to this insistence on the Jewish man’s outward appearance, Atias, the author of The Golden Garden, abolished the connection between what was fashionable and Jewish identity: “It is not the beard nor the hairdo that makes or unmakes you into a good Jew.” Behind this controversy and the tension in various communities around behavior that was interpreted as a violation of discipline, was a deeper protest concealed? As early as the beginning of the 1770s, apostate Gottfried Selig believed that he could discern radical rebellion against the rabbinical leadership among the Jews of Central Europe. In the introduction to the seventh volume of his weekly publication, Der Jude, Selig presented this as a fact known well to his contemporaries: “Many Jews no longer wish to be obligated to the instructions of their old teachers, and they mock them in their hearts.” In his opinion, these were not only educated people, but also simple Jews; influenced by close contact with members of other nations, they distanced themselves from the religion of their ancestors and showed indifference and disgust for it. The Jews who were loyal to their faith (whom Selig called “pious” or “orthodox”) called them “abominations, transgressors, and frivolous.”84

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“From Now on th e Choice Is Fr e e”: Prote st from w ithin th e R eligious Elite Rabbi Nathan Adler (1741–1800) and his disciples in Frankfurt could not be suspected of frivolity or of deviation from religious devotion. On the contrary, with their pious behavior and their zeal for preserving the bounds of sexual modesty, they actually were part of the European movement of religious awakening. However, in the eyes of the enforcers of the community’s traditions, the group’s self-segregation, adoption of Kabbalistic customs, strict observance of commandments, and desire for spiritual elevation were regarded as violations of the existing order. The group was accused of rebellion against the rabbis, and their strange customs, such as attaching ritual fringes to women’s garments and reciting the priestly blessing every day, demonstrated illicit behavior and were said to be responsible for splitting the community. In a proclamation that was read in the synagogues in the autumn of 1779, “the Torah scholar, his honor Rabbi Nathan son of rabbi Shimon Adler Katz,” was ordered to disperse the prayer group that met in his home and to commit himself to praying only in synagogues recognized by the Kahal (the official governing body of the community). Adler’s refusal (“he turned a rebellious shoulder”) aroused the ire of the community leaders, including the rabbi of Frankfurt, Pinchas Horowitz, who excommunicated him. They hoped that his group would disintegrate under the pressure of the prohibitions against participating in a prayer group of the rabbi’s, asking him questions about Halakha, and inviting him to a ceremonial meal.85 Religious innovation that sought to go too far in asceticism and severity beyond the traditional customs challenged Jewish leadership no less than permissiveness. Ten years later, Adler’s excommunication was renewed. His disciple was Moshe Sofer (1762–1839), who later became a central figure in consolidating Jewish orthodoxy and helping it wall itself off from the modern world. This testifies to the relative weakness of the gatekeepers in the face of individual autonomy and groups that paved independent ways for themselves. Rabbi Judah Leib Margolioth (1751–1811) did not intend to become a conservative inspector of religion, but rather an independent and daring reformer who tried with all his might to restore the rationalist philosophy of the Middle Ages to the bloodstream of knowledge and scholarship. Like Schick, he was well connected with the rabbinical elite. Among others, he was acquainted with the Vilna Gaon and the rabbis Landau and Cohen, and he traveled to Bohemia and Germany to have his books printed. He even happened to be in Berlin in

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1778, when the new school was established and the Netivot hashalom project was announced, and in one of his early works, he described enthusiastically the journey of young men thirsty for knowledge to the “court” of a renowned philosopher like Mendelssohn. In 1777, Margolioth published his book, Beit midot (The House of Virtues). In the introduction, he wrote poetically about his corrective mission: “I went down to the gardens of reason, to see the buds of the flowers of the language of philosophers.”86 However, what is especially instructive in the case of Margolioth was his rapid and astonishing retreat. In response to criticism and pressure from his colleagues in the networks of the rabbinical elite, Margolioth hastily published pages of retraction from Beit midot, and these were attached to some of the copies; in these pages, he apologized and contradicted some of his words in praise of philosophy. One must not infer that he had infringed upon the superiority of the Torah over all other kinds of knowledge. Indeed, students of philosophy are required to be very cautious, “not to be impudent and raise their heads, seeking to find knowledge of the divinity, and to be careful not to climb the mountain of philosophy and touch upon its summit.” At that moment, he in fact changed his identity for a second time. At first he had broken the bounds of Torah knowledge, but now he became one of the gatekeepers. One of his statements in the retraction expresses this retreat more than anything. He employed the lexicon of concepts of the panicked guardians of the tradition and marked the boundaries of the conservative camp: “We are fearful for the words of the Lord, and we must not spend our days except with the Torah of our God.”87 Like Schick, Margolioth also was wary of ecstatic Hasidism, but more than anything, in Beit midot, he combined sharp social criticism from an inner and pained point of view and pointed out the failures of a corrupt leadership. He criticized the “sinful men, who cast fear upon the public,” leaders whose “toothed swords and clawed daggers devour the poor of the land, to throw off taxes from themselves and load them upon their brethren.” From within the rabbinical elite of Polish Jewry, Margolioth raised a voice of protest against rabbis who shared in oppressing the weak members of the society.88 He fashioned the rhetoric of his remonstrance with the intention of penetrating his readers’ hearts, but these arguments were anchored in reality. As Adam Teller has shown, during the 1770s, the community of Orla, south of Bialystok, was torn and divided between two rival groups. In this bitter dispute, Rabbi Yankel Leizerovitch was accused of corruption. Instead of sticking to his functions in the area of religion, studying Torah and ruling on Halakha, he exploited his status, harmed the weak, intervened in running the community, provided for his income, and shamed the religion. In 1775, the rabbi’s opponents asked the

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Polish estate managers not to appoint rabbis in Orla anymore. We have Torah scholars in our community who can answer to our religious needs, they said, and nothing will affect our various tax payments, but, in light of our bitter experience, the community would be better off without placing a rabbi over it, and thus it will be reformed, unified, and calmer.89 Shortly afterward, a new voice joined this protest, demanding a distinction between “decent Torah scholars” and “wicked sages” and not hesitating to propose an alternative in the figure of more excellent leaders who displayed responsibility and social sensitivity. In Toldot ya’qov yosef (1780), the first printed book of Hasidic teachings, Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye defied the rabbinical elite and directly addressed the Jewish public at large, arguing that everyone had the democratic right to choose zaddikim as their worthy leaders and rejecting the “wicked” scholars. Throughout his book, he dispersed many critiques of Torah scholars who withdrew from the community and of rabbis who neglected the “masses of the people.” The Hasidic tradition recounts that Rabbi Nachman of Kosów, who belonged to the Ba’al Shem Tov’s fellowship, spoke out bluntly against the rabbinical elite. After the members of the Zolkiew community protested against him, because he took over leadership of prayers and changed the rite (“How did you dare to stand before the ark without permission and to change the order of prayers from that followed by our fathers and forefathers who were the leaders of their generations?”), he replied to them with supreme self-awareness: “Who says that they are in paradise?” Gershon Hundert found in this story a challenge by mystics with charismatic authority against traditional, accepted authority.90 The blows dealt in Toldot ya’aqov yosefi were even harder. In his opinion, scholars were “liable to become coarse in spirit because of too much study” and by losing the virtue of humility, which must accompany fear of heaven. Diminish their value, the critic stated: “The more they drag their feet to the yeshiva to learn, the more they turn away from the blessed Name.” In general, instead of going out on trips to oversee the villages, for example, they expected to receive gifts without making any effort. His subversive advice was that “they should not habituate themselves to study constantly but mingle with human beings.” God filled the entire Creation and was present in human life. Therefore, even in the company of simple people, it was possible to retain a high degree of fear of heaven. On several occasions, he applied a pejorative expression taken from the Zohar to the “wicked” scholars—they were shidin yehudain (Jewish demons) who drew vitality from powers of abomination. Because of the confusion aroused by the presence of two competing groups of Torah scholars, “the masses of the people do not know which of the holy men they should turn to.” The Hasidic teacher

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showed the way by placing the decision in the hands of every individual, declaring that the possibility was entirely open and noting that “from now on the choice is free, you must cling to one or the other.” In his opinion, autonomous, personal judgment would immediately show that the one who tried to find favor in the eyes of the public and flattered it “belongs to the shidin yehudain,” and people must beware of him. The best thing would be to choose good leadership of “Torah scholars who wish to do justice to the people, who loves reprimands and confirms Torah scholars who are righteous.”91 His was not an isolated voice, and the echoes of similar criticism were heard from other Hasidic leaders, including Rabbi Jacob Isaac Horowitz, the Seer of Lublin, who accused “the scholars” of no less than adultery and defects in their worship of God.92 Simon Dubnow identified the spirit of revolution in this protest, calling it “a kind of incitement to the masses to rebel against the government of their former spiritual leaders.”93 Even if this conclusion is exaggerated, and Rabbi Joseph was far from planning an uprising to overthrow the rabbinical regime, there can be no doubt that his radical critique brought many years of bitterness to a peak, in protest against the poor performance of the religious leaders in Poland. In the years after the first polemics against Hasidism, at the critical stage when it had just begun to expand, his words framed it as a movement bearing social protest on its back, among other things, and opposing the religious elite. As we have seen, at the end of the century, Shneur Zalman of Lyadi interpreted the historical meaning of the appearance of the new Hasidic leadership as a corrective of the crisis of the rabbinate, which had failed and degenerated into corruption, and also as a democratic response to rabbinical autocracy, which did not permit free choice in the style of worshiping God. From this point of view, early Hasidism fit into a variety of the reformist trends, which we have been tracing. In an age when both the centralized state and the Jewish reformers of education and religion asked who was the right kind of Jew, we cannot separate, for example, the critique of Haskalah of the neglect of sciences from Hasidic defiance against the degenerate rabbinate. The initiatives of individuals determined to effect a change, despite the opposition of partisans of stability and the tradition, began to make a perceptible mark. Isaak, with whom we began this chapter, managed to establish a new community, from the foundations to the roof, in Sweden, which had been closed against Jewish settlement, and that community has lasted for generations. With his German translation of the Pentateuch, Moses Mendelssohn took “the first step toward culture.” His friends in Berlin established the first modern Jewish school in the world. Cultural migrants from Poland and Lithuania such as Dubno and Satanow added to the new Jewish library. Maimon declared war

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on superstition, and their contemporary, the author of Toldot ya’aqov yosef, attacked “Jewish demons,” who were to be excluded from proper religious leadership. This idea inspired the organization of the Hasidic movement beyond the communal framework and based on devotion to a zaddik, who descended from his high spiritual level in order to fulfill his destiny as an involved leader.

Note s 1. See the Yiddish editions and the translation into German: Aaron Isaak, Autobiographia, trans. N. Shtif (Berlin: Kelal, 1922); and Aaron Isaak, Lebenserinnerungen, Textfassung und Einleitung von Bettina Simon (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994). 2. Isaak, Lebenserinnerungen, 70–72. 3. Ibid., 77. 4. See the letter from Aaron Isaak to Tychsen (August 8, 1775), Nachlass Oluf Gerhard Tychsen, Universitätsbibliothek Rostock, Mss. Orient. 267e, 180–183. 5. Isaak, Minnen, Ett judiskt äventyr I svenskt 1700-tal (Stockholm: Hillelförlaget, 2008), 12. 6. See Arie Morgenstern, “Nesiyato shel haGRA l’alot leerets Yisrael,” in Mistiqa umeshih.iut: mi’aliyat haramh.al ‘ad hagaon mivilna (Jerusalem: Maor, 1999), 263–306; Morgenstern, Doh.aqei haqets: meshih.iyut leah.ar hamashber hashabtai (Jerusalem: Maor, 2015), 202–231. Immanuel Etkes disagrees with him and proves that the journey was earlier and that the traveler from The Hague was not the Gaon. See Etkes, Hatsiyonut hameshih.it shel hagaon mivilna: hamtsaata shel masoret (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2019), 239–253. 7. “Igeret haGRA,” in Israel Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1926), 311–325; see also Moshe Rosman, “Lehiyot isha yehudiya bepolin-lita bereshit ha’et hah.adasha,” in Qiyum veshever, yehudei polin ledoroteihem II, ed. Yisrael Bartal and Yisrael Gutman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 418–420. 8. See Heimann Jolowicz, Geschichte der Juden in Königsberg (Posen: Verlag von Joseph Jolowica, 1867), 97; Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication of America, 1973), 305–307. 9. Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1974), 214–233. 10. Fromet Mendelssohn to Moses Mendelssohn (July 18, 1777) in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 217–219. 11. Emanuel Kant to Marcus Herz (July 20, 1777) in Immanuel Kant, Correspondence, translated and edited by Arnulf Zweig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 162–164.

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12. Mendelssohn to Fromet Mendelssohn (July 22, 1776) in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 219. 13. Salomon Maimon, Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte von Ihm selbst geschrieben und herausgegeben von K. P. Moritz, vol. 1 (Berlin: Karl Philipp Moritz, 1792–1793), 261–263; The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, The Complete Translation, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Abraham P. Socher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 108–110. 14. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 110–117. 15. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 118–119. 16. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 192–197. 17. See Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 218–219; Maciejko, “Sabbatian Charlatans: The First Jewish Cosmopolitans,” European Review of History 17, no. 3 (2010): 361–378. 18. Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 210–211. 19. See Michal Oron, Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter? The Eighteenth-Century Ba’al Shem of London (London: The Littman Library, 2020). David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key Anglo-Jewish Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 161–169; Marsha Keith Schuchard, “Lord George Gordon and Cabbalistic Freemasonry: Beating Jacobite Sword into Jacobin Ploughshares,” in Secret Conversion to Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Martin Mulsow and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 183–231. 20. See Schuchard, Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 21. See Kazimierz Waliszewski, The Story of the Throne: Katherine II of Russia (London: W. Heinemann, 1895), 92. 22. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “Ernst and Falk, Conversations for the Freemasons,” in Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnheim, and other Plays and Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Continuum, 1991), 277–306. 23. Emden, Sefer hitavqut, fol. 129b. 24. H.aim Yosef David Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov hashalem, ed. Aron Freimann (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1934), 124, 155. 25. Ludwig Rosenthal, Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon von Geldern (Düsseldorf: Henn, 1978), 62, 85. 26. See Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 27. Deutsche Chronik auf das Jahr 1775, 646–647. 28. On Jacob Philadelphia, see Fritz Heymann, Der Chevalier von Geldern: Eine Chronik vom Abenteuer der Juden (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1937), 360– 383; Julius Sachse, “Jacob Philadelphia, Mystic and Physicist,” American Jewish

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Historical Society 16 (1907): 73–94; Daniel Jütta, “Haskala und Hokuspokus: Die Biographie Jacob Philadelphias (ca. 1734–1797) und ihre Implikationen für die deutsch-jüdische Geschichte,” BIOS: Zeitschrift für Bibliographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensvelaufsanalysen 20 (2007): 40–51; Daniel Jütte, The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800, trans. Jeremiah Riemer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 244–249. 29. See Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Shabbatai Zevi, 1666–1816, trans. Deborah Greniman (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011). 30. See Gershom Scholem, “Qariera shel frankist: moshe dobrushka vegilgulav,” in Meh.qarim umeqorot letoldot hashabtaut vegilguleiha (Tel Aviv: 1991), 140–209; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 191–198; Silvana Greco, “Heresy, Apostasy and the Beginnings of Social Philosophy: Moses Dobrushka Reconsidered,” Materia Giudaica 20–21 (2015–2016): 439–464. 31. See Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 199–211; Maciejko, “A Portrait of the Kabbalist as a Young Man: Count Joseph Carl Emmanuel Waldstein and His Retinue,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 106 (2017): 521–576; Bernhard Brilling, “Eibenschütziana,” Hebrew Union College Annual 36 (1965): 261–279. 32. See Hillel Levine, ed., “Hakhronika”: te’uda letoldot ya’aqov franks utenu’ato (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1984), 76–98; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude, 196–222; Klaus Samuel Davidowicz, Jakob Frank, der Messias aus dem Ghetto (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1998), 257–280; Oskar Rabinowicz, “Jacob Frank in Brno,” in The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Volume of the Jewish Quarterly Review, ed. Abraham A. Neuman and Solomon Zeitlin (Philadelphia: Jewish Quarterly Review, 1967), 429–445. 33. See Edward Crankshaw, Maria Theresa (London: Bloomsbury Reader, 2013), 368–369, 383–384; Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 41–42; Joseph Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II (Stuttgart: Bleicher Verlag, 1986), 127. 34. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 67, 73. See also Atalio Milano, Ghetto roma, temunot min he’avar, trans. Dina Milano (Tel Aviv: Maariv, 1992), 72–75; Raphael Mahler, Divrei yemei Yisrael, dorot ah.aronim, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1961), 265–270. 35. “Gedanken über das Schicksal der Juden,” Der Teutsche Merkur 3, no. 3 (1775): 213–220; Jacob Toury, “Die Behandlung Jüdischer Problematik in der Tagesliteratur der Aufklärung (bis 1783),” Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte 3 (1976): 13–47. 36. Crankshaw, Maria Theresa, 373–383. 37. See A. Y. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha; meh.qarim betoldot galitsia bameah hashmone-‘esre (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1956), 163–164, 179–181; N. M. Gelber, “Brody,” in Arim vimaut beyisrael, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Insitute,

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1956), 133–135; Rachel Manekin, Yehudei galitsia vehah.uqa haostrit: reshita shel politiqa yehudit modernit (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2015), 12; Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II, 289–310; Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste, ch. 2; Joshua Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 20–21; Stanislaw Grodziski, “The Jewish Question in Galicia: The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Josef II, 1772–1790,” Polin 12 (1999): 61–72. 38. See John Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia, 1772–1825 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 64–68; Pipes, “Katherine II and the Jews,” 3–20; Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Littman Library, 2010), 331–332; Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 39. See Francesca Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 222–232. 40. See Margaret R. O’Leary, Forging Freedom: The Life of Cerf Berr Médelsheim (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2012), 132–134. 41. Azulai, Sefer ma’agal tov, 123. 42. See William Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 66–68; Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 48–49. 43. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 139. 44. Moses Mendelssohn, Ritualgesetze der Juden (Berlin: Christian Friedrich Voss, 1778). See David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (London: Peter Halban, 1996), 104–107; Stephan Wendehorst, “In and Out of Ecclesiastical Law: On the Emergence and Disappearance of the Ius Eccelesiasticum in Late 18th and Early 19th Century Germany,” Jewish Law Association Studies 26 (2016): 22–54. 45. See Ludwig Ernst Borowski, Moses Mendelssohns und Georg David Kypke: Aufsätze über jüdische Gebete und Festen, aus archivalischen Akten (Königsberg: Hartung, 1791); Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn, 102–103; Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 307–310. 46. Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek 38 (1779): 631. 47. See Isaac Euchel, Toldot rabenu hah.akham moshe ben menah.em (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1789), 127; Mendelssohn, “Manasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden,” in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8, 9; Guldon and Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” 136–137; François Guesnet, “Jewish Intercession and the Abolition of Torture in Poland, 1776,” unpublished paper, EAJS, Conference lecture, July 18, 2018.

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48. See Augusta Weldler-Steinberg, Geschichte der Juden in der Schweiz (Goldach: Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund Zürich, 1966). 49. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, 106–107. See Meir Kayserling, Moses Mendelssohn, Sein Leben und Wirken (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1888), 271–272. 50. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 236–237; ibid., vol. 12, 2, 102–103. On the Jews of Dresden, see Alphonse Levi, Geschichte der Juden in Sachsen (Berlin: Verlag von S. Calvary & Co, 1900); Michael Schäbitz, Juden in Sachsen-Jüdische Sachsen? Emanzipation, Akkulturation und Integration 1700–1914 (Hanover: Hahn, 2006); Simone Lässig, “Jewish Life between Change and Insistence,” Einst und Jetzt: Zur Geschichte der Dresdner Synagoge und ihrer Gemeinde (Dresden: Ddp Goldenbogen, 2001). 51. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 31. 52. Mejer’s letter and the passage from von Recke’s diary are found in Ernst Peter Wieckenberg, ed., Einladung ins 18. Jahrhundert (München: C.H. Beck, 1988), 44–49. 53. See Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 553–582; Wieckenberg, Johan Melcior Goeze (Hamburg: Ellert & Richter Verlag, 2007), 186–205. 54. Lessing, Nathan der Weise: Ein dramatisches Gedicht, in fünf Aufzügen (Berlin: C.F. Voss, 1779), here quoted according to two editions: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnheim, and Other Plays and Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Continuum, 1991), and the English translation available online: Lessing, Nathan the Wise, ed. Henry Morley, trans. William Taylor (London: Cassell, 1893). Gutenberg.org, August 10, 2014, https://www.gutenberg .org/files/3820/3820-h/3820-h.htm. 55. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), first day, third story. 56. Lessing, Nathan the Wise. 57. Ibid. 58. Lessing, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin: C.F. Voss, 1780), quotation taken from Modern History Sourcebook: Gotthold Ephriam Lessing (1729– 1781): The Education of the Human Race, 1778, trans. F. W. Robertson, January 20, 2021, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1778lessing-education.asp. 59. Lessing, Nathan the Wise, 214, 239. 60. See Jacob Katz, “Kant vehayahadut, haheqsher hahistori,” Tarbiz 41 (1972): 223, n. 10. 61. Naphtali Herz Wessely, “Mehalel re’a,” Sefer Netivot hashalom (Berlin: George Friedrich Starcke, 1783), fol. 4a. 62. See Matthias Lehmann, “A Livornese ῾Port Jew’ and the Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire,” Jewish Social Studies 11 (Winter 2005): 51–76; Julia Phillips

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Cohen and Sara Abrevaya, eds., Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 34–38. 63. The prospectus inviting subscribers: Shlomo Dubno, ‘Alim litrufa, available in every city . . . to arouse the hearts of volunteers among the people to come and sign on the five books of the Torah, very well proofread, which will be printed, God willing, with a German translation, Amsterdam 5538 (1778). Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 15, 1, 56–64. On this project, see Pertz Sandler, Habiur latora shel moshe Mendelssohn vesi’ato, hihavuto vehashpa’ato (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1984); Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 368–383; Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn, 53–89; Edward Breuer, The Limits of Enlightenment: Jews, Germans, and the Eighteenth-Century Study of Scripture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Steven M. Lowenstein, “The Readership of Mendelssohn’s Bible Translation,” Hebrew Union College Annual 52 (1982): 179–213. 64. Dubno, ‘Alim litrufa. 65. Mendelssohn to Avigdor Levi (May 25, 1779) in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 251–252. 66. Mendelssohn to August Hennings (June 29, 1779) in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 12, 2, 149. 67. See Yerah.miel Cohen, “Retoriqat haemantsipatsia shel hayehudim utemunat he’atid,” in Hamahapekha hatsarfatit verishuma, ed. Cohen (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1991), 145–169; H.aim Berkovitz, Masoret umahapekha: tarbut yehudit betsarfat bereshit ha’et hah. adasha, trans. Ayelet Sextin (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2007), 152–161. This is a revised and expanded edition of Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1780 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 68. “Igeret harav hagaon hagadol moh’ shaul,” Sefer netivot hashalom, fols. 1b–2b. 69. Wessely, “Mehalel rey’a,” fols. 3b–6b. 70. Staats und Gelehrte Zeitung des hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten, no. 114 (17.7.1779). 71. Katz, “R. raphael cohen, yerivo shel moshe mendelssohn,” Halakha bameitsar: mikhsholim ‘al derekh haortodoqsia behithavuta (Jeruslaem: The Magnes Press, 1992), 21–42; Kayserling, Moses Mendelssohn, 286–300. 72. See Uta Lohmann, David Friedländer, Reformpolitik im Zeichen von Aufklärung und Emanzipation (Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2013); Julius H. Schoepes, David Friedländer, Freund und Schüler Moses Mendelssohns (Hildesheim: Olms, 2012); Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew, Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749–1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), ch. 3. On the Freischule see Ingrid Lohmann, ed., Die Jüdische Freischule in Berlin 1778–1825, im Umfeld preussischer Bildungspolitik und jüdischer Kultusreform, vols. 1–2 (Münster: Waxmann, 2001).

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73. Wessely, Rav tuv livnei yisrael (Berlin: Not known, 1782). The citation from the edition: (Vienna: Anton Schmid, 1826), 83–84; the request of David Friedländer and Daniel Itzig of King Friedrich II, Jan. 9, 1784, in Lohmann, Die Jüdische Freischule in Berlin 1778–1825, vol. 1, 226–227. 74. See Shmuel Werses, “’Al yitsh.aq satanow veh.iburo mishlei asaf,” in Megamot vetsurot besifrut hahaskala (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1990), 163– 168. The quotation is taken from the Yitsh.aq Satanow’s edition of Sefer hagedarim (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1798), fol. 2b. 75. Baruch Schick of Shklov, Sefer ‘amudei shamayim (Berlin: Unknown, 1777), introduction; Schick, Sefer yesod ‘olam (Berlin: Unknown, 1777), introduction. 76. Schick, “Haqdama,” in Sefer uqlidos (The Hague: Leib Sussman, 1780). See David Fishman, “A Rabbi Meets the Berlin Haskalah: The Case of R. Baruch Schick,” AJS Review 12 (1987): 95–121; Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 22–45; Morgenstern, “H.azon shivat hamada’im letsiyon shel hagaon mivilna,” in Doh. aqei haqets, 232–240; Yosef Salmon, “‘Al pulmus keneged hah.asidut behaqdamat r’ barukh mishklov lesefer uklidos,” in Meh. qerei h. asidut, ed. Immanuel Etkes, David Assaf, and Yosef Dan (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1999), 57–64. 77. Landau, Nod’a beyehuda, vol. 2, Orah. h.ayim, question 10 (Marh.eshvan 21, 5538 [1778]); Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 223. 78. See Simh.a Assaf, Meqorot letoldot hah. inukh beyisrael, ed. Shmuel Glick (Jerusalem: JTS, 2002), 34. 79. See Elh.anan Tal, ed., Haqehila haashkenazit beamsterdam bameah hayodh. et (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2010), 152, 212. 80. See Stefan Litt, Pinkas, Kahal and the Mediene: The Records of Dutch Ashkenazi Communities in the Eighteenth-Century as Historical Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 216. 81. See Claudia Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 201–224. 82. See Ruling of the rabbinical court of Metz, 4 Av, 5538, Jay R. Berkovitz, Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court 1771–1789, vols. 1–2 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). On the register and its historical context and meaning, see Berkovitz’s extensive introductions in Berkovitz, “Hashilton ha’atsmi betsarfat: miqehila lekonsistoria,” in Qahal Yisrael: hashilton ha’atsmi hayehudi ledorotav, vol. 3, ed. Israel Bartal (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2004), 67–110 (esp. 84–99); Berkovitz, Masoret umahapakha, 64–93. 83. See Zvi Malachi, “‘Vikuah. hasheratsim’: alagoria anti maskilit meet shimshon friedburg mihamburg,” Mahut 13 (1994): 47–68; Malachi, “‘Shemesh

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hasharon’ leshimshon friedburg: lebiqoret hah.evra hayehudit bameah hayodh.et,” Mahut 16 (1995): 7–50. 84. See Katz, “R’ raphael cohen, yerivo shel mendelssohn,” 249; Lehmann, “A Livornese ῾Port Jew,’” 61; Der Jude: Eine Wochenschrift 7 (1771): 4–5; Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 228. 85. Reu ma’ase t’at’uim, yazhir mih. evrat anashim tsevu’im, po’alei aven (Watch out for deception, be warned against socializing with hypocrites and evildoers) (Frankfurt, 5549 [1789]); resolution of the heads of the community of Frankfurt, 10 Elul 5549, in Edward Fram, A Window on their World: The Court Diary of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim, Frankfurt am Main, 1773–1794 (Cincinnati: The Hebrew Union College, 2012), 555–556; Shimon Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), 434–441; Rachel Elior, “Natan adler veha’eda hah.asidit befrankfurt: haziqa bein h.avurot h.asidiot bemizrah. eiropa uvemerkaza bameah hayod-h.et,” Zion 59 (1994): 31–64. 86. Yehuda Leib Margolioth, Ze sefer beit hamidot . . . letaqen et haderakhim ulehorot et hanevukhim, l’asot enosh veadam nirdam gever nirdam h. akham meh. ukham (Dyhernfurth: Uknown, 1777), fol. 1b. See Shmuel Feiner, “Hadrakon hakarukh ‘al hakaveret: y”l margolioth vehaparadoqs shel hahaskala hamuqdemet,” Zion 63 (1998): 39–74. 87. Margolioth, Beit midot, “hashmata,” fols. 44b–45b. 88. Ibid., fols. 25b–26b. This critique became even fiercer in the later version of Beit midot (1786), directed at corrupt community rabbis and Hasidic zaddikim; see Margaliot, Sefer beit midot (Jerusalem: Y. Margolioth, 1970), 81–84. 89. See Adam Teller, “Tradition and Crisis? Eighteenth-Century Critiques of the Polish-Lithuanian Rabbinate,” Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 3 (2011): 8–12. 90. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Besht], The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 135; Gershon Hundert, “H.ayei hayehudim bepolin-lita bameah ha-18,” in Qiyum veshever, vol. 1, ed. Yisrael Bartal and Yisrael Gutman (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1997), 238. 91. Ya’aqov Yosef Hacohen, Sefer toldot ya’aqov yosef (Korecz: Zvi Hirsch ben Arie Leib, 1780). See Arieh Handler, “Shedin yehudain,” Ma’ayan 47, no. 1 (2007): 41–52; Teller, “Tradition and Crisis?,” 19–23. On the publication of Toldot ya’aqov yosef and the role of its printer, Shlomo of Luck, see Zeev Gries, Sefer, sofer vesipur bereshit hah. asidut (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1992), 54–56. 92. See Uriel Gelman, Hashvilim hayotsim milublin: tsemih. ata shel hah. asidut bepolin (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2018), 32–33. 93. See Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 97–101, 138–140.

Part III

1781–1800

THIRTEEN

k

“GREAT THOUGHTS BUBBLE UP AND AWAKEN” The Tangle of the Years 1781–1782

Had there been any doubt whether Hasidism arose as an oppositional movement in the 1780s among the Jews of Poland, whose leaders fiercely criticized the rabbinical elite, the first book by Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye confirmed the suspicions of the opponents and was taken as an injurious and unforgiveable act of defiance, rekindling the winds of war from the previous decade. Although the leaders of the Hasidic groups were part and parcel of that narrow stratum of intellectuals who represented the contents and values of the religion, both as Torah scholars and community rabbis, and also as Kabbalists and Hasidim, they expressed criticism of the scholars but also apprehension regarding separate social and religious organization and the schism that was opening within it. At the end of the summer of 1781, pamphlets were once again published, severe threats were heard, and the young Hasidic movement was persecuted as a dangerous, heretical sect. On the Sabbath of 20 Av (August 11, 1781), the warden of the great synagogue of Vilna, Mordecai Ben Eliezer, proclaimed the decree of excommunication: “Behold, for our many sins, the aforesaid blemish has awakened and spread in all the countries of the Diaspora, and they began to shine as at the first, ‘a root that beareth gall and wormwood’ (Deut. 29:18) . . . and they also began to hunt for pure souls and incite them and divert them from the paved way of our ancestors of blessed memory . . . to make them depart from study of our holy Torah except for their counterfeit worship, which conceals the face of falsehood.”1

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“Th e Z a ddik Pa sse s through H ell to R a ise u p th e W ick ed”: Th e 1781 Dispu te All the anxiety that the Hasidim sparked were combined in this decree of excommunication. There were concerns about the interruption of Torah study, contempt for scholars, propaganda that successfully attracted new believers, and disruption of family life because of journeys to the courts of zaddikim, and above all, there was a growing suspicion that a dissenting sect had secretly arisen, threatening the stability of the religion, after the excommunication of 1772 proved to be insufficient to do away with it. This dispute had far-reaching consequences because it deepened the consolidation of the independent identity of the Hasidic movement. In its early stages, Hasidism “acted in loose frameworks of charismatic individuals and holy societies”; however, even a decade earlier, the confrontation with the protests of the Mitnagdim, which marked and segregated them, developed an independent consciousness of being a distinct movement with a collective identity. Henceforth, closeness to Hasidism would be interpreted as “a total conversion of identity,” labeling the Hasid and the zaddik and strengthening the sense of sharing the path of all the Hasidic groups.2 In 1781, in Korzec, Shlomo of Łuck, the hardworking editor and publisher who, more than anyone else, worked to establish the Hasidic library, published Magid devarav leya’aqov (He Tells His Words to Jacob), the teachings of his admired Rabbi Dov Ber, the maggid of Międzyrzec. In doing so, he said he was fulfilling the maggid’s explicit request to publicize his teachings. In his introduction, he also laid the foundations of the Hasidic narrative, legitimizing the new movement, constructing its splendid family tree, and connecting the Lurianic Kabbalah of Safed with the Ba’al Shem Tov in Poland. Kabbalah had been neglected for generations, and Hasidism took it upon itself to redeem it: “Behold, for our many sins, many generations abounded, lower and lower, and there were fewer hearts, and this wisdom was nearly forgotten, except with a tiny few select individuals . . . until with the mercy of the Lord upon us, the light of Israel shone, the divine, holy rabbi, our master and teacher, Israel Ba’al Shem Tov and his holy disciples.” In this historical account, which underlay the Hasidic tradition for generations, Rabbi Jacob Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye and Rabbi Dov Ber were the most recent link in a chain of Kabbalists that began with Rabbi Shimon Bar Yoh.ai, continued with Rabbi Moshe Cordovero and Rabbi Isaac Luria (the ARI), and culminated in the Ba’al Shem Tov.3 A very similar process of transition from individuals who were pained by the neglect of the sciences to a movement with independent identity and an

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orderly structure took place in 1781 and 1782 among the Maskilim. Several spokesmen for the rabbinical elite opposed the initiative for the reform of Jewish education. This, along with the dispute that broke out following the appeal and Naphtali Herz Wessely’s publication of Divrei shalom veemet (Words of Peace and Truth), in which he sketched the first detailed outlines for the establishment of thoroughly modern schools, led the Maskilim to the realization that the fulfillment of their vision of the redemption of scientific knowledge and philosophy, of renewal of the Hebrew language, and of reform of Jewish society and culture would also require a struggle. Prussia, which was the chosen destination of cultural emigrants and converts from Poland and Lithuania, was now identified with Haskalah, and Moses Mendelssohn was renowned, both at home and abroad, as the central figure in the new movement. Even during his lifetime, young Maskilim who venerated him called him RAMBAMAN (Rabbi Moshe Ben Menah.em), similar to the acronym used for Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon). Analogously with Hasidism, about which they knew very little, they established a family tree of their own consisting of rationalist philosophers, with the major figure being Maimonides. Thus, at the beginning of the 1780s, two of the most prominent movements of the Jewish eighteenth century appeared in parallel, though at that stage they were both relatively small. Despite the considerable difference between them, they shared the aspiration to reform what they identified as flaws in Jewish society and the belief that they bore a message for a better future. Moreover, the domain of Kabbalistic texts and sermons and writing in modernized Hebrew as well as the frameworks of the Hasidic movement and of the Maskilic reading society were exclusively for men and entirely closed off to women. The aspiration of both Maskilim and Hasidim for independence from authority external to them did not go unnoticed by their adversaries. Thus, as mentioned, Mendelssohn was asked why rabbinic approbations were absent from his “Biur,” and their absence from Toldot ya’aqov yosef served as evidence of the new and critical spirit that wafted from the book by Rabbi Joseph and justified its categorical rejection. The independent and distinct identity of Hasidism and Haskalah emerged at the beginning of the decade when thinking about the patterns of Jewish existence as a minority in the country arose again and occupied a central place in the public agenda of Central Europe. The demand of the Maskilim for educational reform was closely connected to Emperor Joseph II’s policy of reform and tolerance. A few years before the great French Revolution, thinkers and statesmen already confronted the Jews with the challenge of naturalization. Several of the deepest questions of the modern age were formulated at that time, explicitly or implicitly: What does the state expect of the Jews living in it?

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What was the price demanded in return for a policy of integration and relative tolerance? Did personal and collective identity change completely following penetration of the idea that Jews were people like everyone else? All of this was asked while, in parallel, competition for leadership developed; it derived from the great question of who the right kind of Jew was and what the correct way of guiding him was. In Poland and Lithuania, rabbis and Hasidic zaddikim contended over the character of leadership and the way to worship God, and in Central Europe, an entirely different alternative arose. Henceforth Maskilic intellectuals, whose values derived from those of the European Enlightenment, would also make their way to leadership status. Belief that a dramatic historical turning was taking place before their eyes and an awareness of a change in the times and of the almost messianic advent of a new age nourished their vision of a reformed future. The Vilna community also spearheaded the second act in the protest against Hasidism in 1781, and this time, the Vilna Gaon lent his authority to the fierce proclamations that rang with warning bells and proclaimed, with panic, that “the sect of inciters and agitators” posed an imminent threat. Two special envoys equipped themselves with a proclamation signed by the Gaon and set out to publicize the excommunication among the communities of Lithuania. The Gaon added the remark, “Although it is not my way to leave my domain, nevertheless,” to his signature. This was an urgent moment: “A time when they violated His Torah, a time to act [in His name, a reference to Ps. 119:126], and therefore I, too, will sign.” The rhetoric of the protest confronted the two parties in the uncompromising manner of the path of truth versus the path of falsehood, enlisted the addressees in a holy war, and absolutely condemned all religious innovation. The initiators of the struggle were convinced that they must suppress the rebellion and restore unity. The sanctions against the Hasidim were formulated as a series of steps to exclude and humiliate them. Within a few days (by the New Moon of Elul, 5541, August 21–22, 1781), the envoys arrived at the fair of Zelwa, where, at the same time as the merchants, the community leaders had also gathered. They immediately decided to join in the ban, and a strict version of it was proclaimed publicly to those who had come to the fair: “They may not have any quorum in a house of prayer, they may not be given lodging for the night, their slaughtering is forbidden to us, and we may not do business with them, or marry them, or deal with their burial, and their burial shall be that of a donkey.” The leaders of Grodno, Pinsk, and Sluck, who were present at the fair, each wrote their own proclamation of excommunication and hurried to send it back to their communities. They emphasized their concern about the splitting of synagogues, they forbade prayer in what was called the

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Sephardic rite, influenced by the Kabbalists of Safed, and they implored people not to be tempted by “the aforementioned sect of hypocrites” or to travel to the Hasidic zaddikim (the communities of Pinsk and Carlin were singled out as particularly dangerous places); anyone who had already set out was required to return within a week.4 Underlying the panic that gripped the leaders of the communities of Lithuania was their great surprise at what they understood correctly and with no small astonishment as the temerity of the Hasidism, who offered a new channel of religious life and refused to retreat, even under threat of excommunication. The publication of Hasidic teachings in the books by the maggid of Międzyrzec and Rabbi Joseph was seen as public defiance. According to rumors, Toldot ya’aqov yosef was publicly burned in some places. Among the polemical writings, a single, independent, personal voice was heard—one that was not satisfied with condemnation but sought to investigate and understand why the Hasidim still did not surrender and how their leaders, who ostensibly spoke with exactly the same religious voice, could explain their surprising, destabilizing, and unacceptable behavior. Before joining the emergency assembly at the Zelwa fair, Rabbi Abraham Katzenellenbogen, who had served for more than twenty years in the community of Brisk, had had the exceptional opportunity of making these arguments public and directly to Rabbi Levi Yitsh.aq of Berdyczow. He reported that the two of them happened to meet in the synagogue of the Praga suburb of Warsaw, where a penetrating dispute took place between himself and the man he called with contempt “Yitsh.ak the Zelichower [from Zelichow, where Levi Yitsh.aq had previously served as a rabbi] and their chief hooligan.” Katzenellenbogen attacked the Hasidic leader for daring to deviate from the path of Judaism, and as he said to the people at the fair, he had no doubt that he had won a decisive victory: “And behold the aforementioned man . . . was as mute and did not open his mouth . . . he was panicked and stunned,” and Katzenellenbogen published “his shame widely.”5 However, his shout of victory was not the end of the matter. Something of his self-confidence was impaired, and he implored Levi Yitsh.ak to agree to another opportunity to dispute. He presented seven subjects for the dispute to him and did not hesitate to call him the wicked son from the Passover Haggadah, who rejected Judaism. He concluded with words of reproach and the wish that he would admit to the truth and return to the straightway. Putting his finger precisely on the modernistic dimension of Hasidism, Katzenellenbogen wondered how it could be that they broke down a barrier by choosing a different and independent way and by “saying I will rule . . . and making up new customs and practices that our fathers never imagined.” Was this not the opposite path

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to that of legitimate legislators, “the famous scholars and men to be emulated”? Katzenellenbogen rejected any justification for altering divine worship, either in the wording of the prayers or in an enthusiastic, tumultuous style, and could not accept rebellion against authority by ignoring in such an odious manner all the decrees of excommunication that had been issued against the Hasidism so far. Finding it difficult to believe in the loss of the effectiveness of the protests, restrictions, punishments, and prohibitions, and with what appears in retrospect to have been the panic of a man whose religious authority was slipping from his grasp, Katzenellenbogen implored his colleague and rival: Even if you have found justifications for the path of Hasidism, at least consider the consequences of religious schism and “whether there is worthwhile and sufficient reason to decide to avoid all the great and enormous dangers that are liable to be renewed because of your actions.”6 Meanwhile, one Hasidic book after another was published in Korzec, especially by Shlomo of Łuck. In an apology at the beginning of Magid devarav leya’aqov, he responded to the challenge to the authority of Hasidic books, because they did not appear accompanied by the approbations of the “great ones of our time,” and he also admitted that the effort to publish the teachings of Hasidism was intended to circulate the ideas of the new movement of religious awakening. He had not managed to obtain approbations, the publisher apologized, because he had to respond to the urgent implorations of “the great men of the world and fearers of God for the holy words of the holy rabbi [the maggid of Międzyrzec] . . . who greatly desire for his teaching to spread in the world.” They realized that by using printing as a medium of communication, it was possible to give voice to the sermons of the Hasidic leaders to a much larger community than those who crowded into their courts—one of the distinctive marks of the eighteenth century. They saw its great importance for growth of the self-consciousness of the movement. Zeev Gries has called attention to the central role played by Shlomo of Łuck as a cultural agent in the consolidation of Hasidism. As an editor and publisher, he mediated between the first zaddikim and their oral teaching and the audience who could henceforth listen to the voice of the zaddikim bursting from the pages of their books.7 Before the reverberations of the dispute had died down, in 1782, shortly after the death of its author, Rabbi Joseph, his book, Tsafnat pa’aneah. (the name given to Joseph by Pharoah, see Gen. 41:45), was published in Korzec. As he had in his first book, here, too, he laid down the ideological principles for the doctrine of the zaddik, which was the ongoing basis for the legitimacy of Hasidic leadership. Its essence lay in the cleaving of the masses to the zaddik, enabling even those on a low spiritual level to rise up: “The Torah commanded, ‘thou

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shalt cling to him,’ to cling to Torah scholars is like clinging to Him, blessed be He.” Rabbi Joseph’s teachings consolidated the status of the zaddik as a man with exceptional religious qualities (“every single zaddik is the mind and soul of the people of his generation”), charging him with the great task of saving sinners (“for the zaddik passes through Hell to raise up the wicked, that is he who clings to him”). Once again, the new and worthy religious elite was differentiated from the rabbinical leadership, which, in the opinion of Tsafnat pa’aneah., failed dismally. “The scholars,” Rabbi Joseph asserted, hated “the rebukers at the gate,” and the result was dangerous: “After [the masses] saw that the scholars did not hear their voice, that is, that they did not heed the voice of morality, therefore the masses did not walk in [the way of the Torah] at all.” As if this were not sufficient, when he wished to show how far the corruption of the leadership had gone and to highlight their pursuit of wealth and their distance from proper worship of God, he applied a particularly insulting image to the scholars: “For he is like the whore who, while having intercourse with her husband, her thoughts are always on the frivolous business of adultery . . . thus, the scholars, while they are studying, fornicate with the wealthy in their thought, and the rich fornicate with all the business they have with them, and they calculate it in their hours of Torah and prayer.”8 The erotic language increased the enthusiasm for demonizing the adversary. Whereas the printed doctrines of Hasidism contain a theology that can be interpreted as the severe demand for transferring sexual desire from women of flesh and blood to God, who is absolutely spiritual, in the view of the Mitnagdim, the new movement appeared to liberate instincts and dismantle families, to be permissive, and to throw off the yoke. For example, Rabbi Joseph compared the supreme satisfaction attained by the worshippers of God in prayer and study (“the matter of the pleasure for a man who is entire in his Torah and prayer, who attaches himself to the holy letters”) to a man’s pleasure from sex (“like the living member in intercourse, which is the most select of pleasures”). By contrast, the Mitnagdim were shocked by sexual delinquency and claimed that the Hasidim “harden themselves consciously while at prayer, as ordered by Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem.” According to David of Makow, he instructed them that “you must be like one who shoots [his semen like] an arrow while at prayer, and prayer must unify with the Shekhina, and therefore you must move as during the sexual act.”9 The loud and emotional voices of this dispute give one the impression that the people of the time saw themselves as involved in a truly existential struggle, whereas in fact this conflict was relatively limited. It did not continue uninterruptedly but broke out every few years. Despite its image as an expanding sect

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that was enlisting supporters and gathering self-confidence, Hasidism was still a small movement, and the vast majority of Eastern European Jews belonged to neither camp and took no part in the quarrel. However, the extreme rhetoric of the Mitnagdim and the consciousness of a rift between the rival camps had considerable significance. In general, this was yet another eighteenth-century outburst—very close in time to political revolutions, in particular—of the fear of rebellion against the existing order, of criticism, and of a manner of religious expression that was correctly interpreted as autonomous and subversive. For example, Katzenellenbogen’s desire to overcome Yitsh.ak derived to a great degree from perplexity and a deep sense of living in an era of destabilization and a lack of security. He noted that this was a “tricky time of stormy schism and fogginess and dust storms full of smoke.”10 With the intuition of a representative of the “old” Torah elite, he understood the depth of the Hasidic revolution, which had begun to change the face of Eastern European Jewry. The main tangible signs of this resolution were quite visible in the early 1780s: the appearance of the Hasidic leader, who mediated between heaven and earth, the formation of Hasidic groups beyond the boundaries of the community, and the creation of a new library, which offered attractive, spiritual religiosity.11

In depen dence a n d Cr iticism— bet w e en Schi ll er a n d K a nt In 1742, when Italian Kabbalist Immanuel Hai Ricchi (1688–1743) had his book, Yosher levav (Integrity of Heart), published in Amsterdam, he claimed that the last third of the year 5541 (1781) would be “the end of the exile.” He joined a series of men who predicted the end of days and yearned for redemption from heaven. At that time, some forty years still remained until the marvelous date when “the Jews will be in peace from their troubles and wars.” Ricchi himself was murdered by robbers on his way from Italy to the Land of Israel, so he did not live to see the age when “we will be joyous and happy.” His determination of the precise date, which depended on the Zohar and on the Kabbalah of the ARI, did not give rise to a messianic movement, nor did the attractive power of the Hasidic leaders lie in advancing expectations of the imminent redemption of the entire people.12 The publication, in 1781, of the letter of the Ba’al Shem Tov to his brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershon of Kitov (d.1761), as an appendix to the book by Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye, Ben porat yosef, also was not intended to encourage belief in imminent redemption. Rather, it was meant to bolster the authority of the disciple who now guided the multitude in the teachings of his

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master. This letter does describe a conversation with the Messiah when the soul of the Ba’al Shem Tov ascended to the upper worlds, and it also cites a saying that redemption depends on disseminating his teaching and mystical system; however, rather than expressing messianic tension in the present, it postpones the date of redemption. The Ba’al Shem Tov expressed great sorrow and visible disappointment to his brother-in-law in the Land of Israel in this letter, written thirty years earlier, which never reached its destination. “In such a great length of time, when can this be?”13 The expectation for radical change can be felt, in fact, in the intellectual ferment in the non-Jewish world. Friedrich Schiller’s tempestuous drama, The Robbers, is infused with revolutionary spirit. Seven years before the French Revolution, in a declaration of personal independence as a creative author who resists public opinion, Schiller himself rebelled against those who would restrict his freedom: “I write as a citizen of the world who serves no prince. From now on all my ties are dissolved. The public is now everything to me . . . I wish to place myself before this tribunal and no other. . . . The only crown I shall appeal to is the human soul.” In the play, Spiegelberg, one of the most daring and cruelest members of the gang of robbers, has a heart that truly bursts with faith that he has the power to do exalted things: “Great thoughts bubble up and awaken in my soul! Gigantic plans are fermenting in my creative brain.”14 Mozart took a step similar to Schiller’s. After years of composing and performing under the oppressive patronage of the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus von Colloredo (1732–1812), Mozart left, no longer wishing to be a servant. There is a Jewish angle to his embarkation on an independent career. He lived in an apartment in the center of Vienna, in the same building as the family of Nathan and Fanny Arnstein, who belonged to the wealthy, cultivated Jewish elite. Through them he made connections with the Viennese aristocracy. Fanny was the daughter of Daniel Itzig of Berlin. She entertained government ministers in her salon, along with writers and musicians. She was one of Mozart’s admirers and regularly attended his concerts.15 After severing the ties of the archbishop’s patronage, Mozart defied his father by marrying Constanza Weber (1762–1842) in the Church of St. Stephen. Mozart declared that no one would manage his life any longer or mix into his personal love life. In an intimate letter to his father, he justified his right to satisfy his sexual desire by marrying Constanza. Nature speaks loudly within me, he said, as with everyone, perhaps even more strongly than in a big, strong, foolish boy. But he cannot live like the other young men of his day, he confesses, because religion restricts him. He did not wish to harm human creatures by

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seducing young girls, as he was very frightened of becoming infected with the venereal diseases spread by prostitutes.16 Immanuel Kant, who was already past the age of fifty and was a bachelor all his life, could have supported Mozart’s approach, though without the sanction of religion. In a lecture at the University of Königsberg in 1780 on the ethics of sexuality, he argued that only marriage, which upholds mutuality and equality between man and wife, provides the ethical framework appropriate for sexual life that is not injurious and that preserves the self and human dignity.17 These humanistic arguments would certainly have led Kant to condemn French military officer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s (1741–1803) best-selling novel, Les liaisons dangereuses, which gave thousands of readers a view behind the curtains of the bedrooms of high society. This epistolary novel reveals a whole world of intrigues, romantic seduction, courtship, betrayal, and desire. Laclos showed that even sexual desire can be planned and rational. In an ironic disclaimer in the introduction to the novel, Laclos wrote: “Several of the characters that [the author] places on the stage have such terrible morals that it is impossible to suppose they could have lived in our century; in this century of philosophy, where light, spread everywhere, has, as everyone knows, made all the men so honest and all the women so modest and reserved.”18 Kant might have been distant from the world of the theater, opera, and romantic intrigues in high society, but from the heights of his academic chair, the Prussian philosopher observed his times with a sharp eye and gave it conceptual definitions. In parallel with Schiller, Mozart, and Laclos, in 1781, he finished one of his most important works, The Critique of Pure Reason, which was published in Riga, in the Russian Empire. In Kant’s philosophy, the human subject stands at the center of the metaphysical universe, and it creates the concepts within which it acts. He argued that man himself establishes his world by means of reason. In Kant’s picture of existence, the power of human judgment reached maturity in the eighteenth century. His philosophical vision was woven from consciousness of the superiority of the people of his time, and it looked far to the future with confidence, saying that “it may . . . be possible to achieve, even before the close of the present century, what so many centuries have not been able to achieve, namely to give complete satisfaction to human reason with regard to those questions which have in all ages exercised its desire for knowledge, though hitherto in vain.” In an important footnote in the introduction to the book, he made a subversive declaration: “Our age is, in every sense of the word, the age of criticism, and everything must submit to it.” The human intellect was, of course, limited and not omnipotent. Nevertheless, Kant envisioned the imminent accomplishment of a revolutionary task.

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Liberated reason would be subject only to “the inherent rights of reason, which recognizes no other judge but universal human reason itself.” It will “institute a court of appeal which should protect the just rights of reason.” In the introduction to subsequent editions, several of the goals were stated, with emphasis on the argument that, with respect to religion, only criticism can uproot the radical on the left and the right: “Thus, and thus alone, can the very root be cut off of materialism, free-thinking, unbelief, fanaticism, and superstition, which may become universally injurious.” Although his thinking appears to be located within the abstract human mind, in his call for establishing a “court of appeal which should protect the just rights of reason,” in the supremacy that he attributed to criticism, and in his admonition that free criticism does not accept any supreme government, Kant, at the beginning of the 1780s, joined his philosophical voice both to the faith of the enlightened that a new era in human history had begun and to the reformist aspirations to improve human life and society.19 The intellectuals’ recognition of a new era was implanted to a great degree in various emerging trends in Europe at that time and in the significance given to them by the people. In international affairs, 1781 and 1782 were relatively stable, undisturbed by war, and aware, among other things, of a demographic increase and rise in life expectancy. While for most of the Europeans, life continued to be a harsh struggle for survival under conditions of constant want and exhausting work, the vast social gap continued to favor members of the upper classes and the prosperous bourgeoisie. However, quite a few voices expressed enthusiasm about the changes and innovations of the time, and in the lexicon of the intellectuals, the term revolution was frequently used to emphasize their significance. The reformist urge of the new emperor in Vienna aroused hopes and expectations among the partisans of Enlightenment. In the 1780s, processes of secularization weakened personal commitment to the values of Christian morality and the authority of the clergy, to the distress of those who feared the “horrible fire” of irreligiosity. In France, for example, the church found it hard to enlist priests, and more Catholic couples in the cities and villages used birth control. In the styles of men’s and women’s clothing, the formality of the French aristocracy gradually gave way to simple British country clothing, which was lighter and allowed more freedom of movement to the body. Under the influence of Goethe’s The Sorrow of Young Werther, the protagonist’s rustic costume became popular among Goethe’s admiring readers. At the end of the book, after he has shot himself, he was found fully clothed, wearing boots, in a blue frock coat with a yellow vest. In England, improvement in Watt’s steam engine

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accelerated the mining of coal and the weaving of cotton. Demand for engines increased, and people looked at them with admiration, as they were a revolution in industrialization similar to the influence of printing on literature. In the town of Annonay, France, brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier made experiments on textiles suitable for hot air balloons, which they exhibited in the summer of the following year. August Ludwig von Schlözer (1734–1809), a pioneer in historiography at the university of Göttingen and a liberal intellectual, attributed huge and dramatic importance to the influence of changes in consumption of food in Europe on the habits of life with the introduction of sugar, coffee, and tea (according to an article he published in 1781, the changes actually had a harmful influence of health). He informed his contemporaries that this was perhaps “a greater revolution” than the events that took place on the battlefield and in the diplomatic arena.20 These two years stood halfway between two great earthquakes in the political history of the West: the American and French revolutions. The defeat of British troops in the battle of Yorktown, Virginia (October 19, 1781), and their surrender to the army of George Washington, who was assisted by French troops, in effect ended the War of Independence and led to King George III’s acquiescence in the loss of the North American colonies. The peace treaty was signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783. English intellectual Thomas Paine emigrated to America and became the most prominent and enthusiastic spokesman for the rebellion against Britain and the idea of liberty. During the years of the confrontation between America and Britain, he conveyed a sense of crisis to his readers in his pamphlets, Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783). From the commonsense point of view, liberation from British rule had earth-shattering significance. No wonder Europe looked on with admiration for the principles of America: “There is something in the cause and consequence of America that has drawn on her the attention of all mankind.” In the last pamphlet of The American Crisis, Paine praised the success of the struggle for liberty and called it the greatest and most perfect revolution the world had ever witnessed, “a new creation intrusted to our hands.”21 In the 1790s, Paine went to Paris, the next stage in the revolutions he promoted. In the early 1780s, it was not possible to predict the dramatic events or how a prolonged economic crisis, which grew deeper because of the loans to finance French aid to the North American colonies, would evolve into a political crisis. One of the early signs was evident in 1781, when the French finance minister, Jacques Necker (1732–1804), had the data on France’s economic state published. His purpose was to conceal France’s heavy debts, but publication of the report implied recognition of the importance of responsibility toward

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a large public and the existence of an inquisitive and critical public. This was the key for understanding the deep and dramatic process that came to fruition in the revolution, when sovereignty passed from the absolute rule of the king to those who saw themselves as representing the public and protecting its welfare.22 Optimism prevailed within the enlightened Republic of Letters regarding the ability of its members to change history by means of printed words of criticism. For example, in 1782, Louis Sebastian Mercier (1740–1814), an author and playwright who lived in Paris, observed the changes that took place in his generation with a discerning eye and declared with enthusiasm that during the past thirty years, a great and significant revolution had occurred in the way people think: public opinion enjoyed preponderant power in Europe, and thanks to the efforts of intellectuals, public opinion had critical influence on the course of events.23 A certain echo of these earthshaking changes can also be heard among the Jewish minority in Germany, a sign of the maturation, in the early 1780s, of two of the most important avenues of change in the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century: the aspiration of intellectuals to attain positions of influence and the ambition of individuals to free themselves from supervision of the community and the religion. An initiative within the community of Königsberg to convince the public of the need to effect educational reform and a protest in the Altona-Hamburg community against enforcement of discipline on a Jew who was a libertine and expressed free and critical thought fit in well with the new times. Like Solomon Maimon, Isaac Euchel (1756–1804) chose to tell the story of his life as an example of the success of young men who satisfied their desire for knowledge despite the obstacles that stood in their way. He was born in the relatively new community of Copenhagen. At the age of thirteen, he was sent to Berlin to study Torah, and he gradually broke through the narrow confines of Torah culture and became a Maskil. Along with Joel Brill, another young man who lived in the city under the protection of wealthy men and who, in time, became one of his partners in establishing the Haskalah movement, Euchel made his way into Mendelssohn’s court. He observed him from a distance, and “like you and like myself, we made it a rule for ourselves to adopt his ethics and to walk in his ways.” After several false starts, Euchel joined the household of the scientist from Hanover, Raphael Levi, and thus he was rescued from the miserable life of a nomad; now he earned his living as a private tutor in the homes of the wealthy. One of his employers sent him to Königsberg, where he found work with the Friedländers, a family of merchants. With their support, in the winter of 1781, he registered at

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the university and was accepted by Kant (“My wise teacher, Kant, in Königsberg, whom I served in the study of his wisdom for five uninterrupted years”). He even harbored hopes, which were disappointed, of receiving an academic post as an instructor of Eastern languages. During his first year there, when The Critique of Pure Reason appeared, Euchel made a “Kantian move” and placed the leadership of the Jewish community of Königsberg before the tribunal of criticism. The student who had just arrived in the city and whose legal status was that of one of the servants in the employ of the Friedländer family demanded recognition of the flaws in Jewish education. He suggested that the members of the community should pressure the leadership by writing letters of support, which would be placed with the rabbi, expressing their desire to establish a school with teachers who would be Maskilim and who knew languages and the sciences. In his pamphlet, Sefat emet (The Language of Truth), which he published in late 1781 in an effort to mobilize public opinion in favor of his plan, he painted a picture of a crisis for which the leadership was responsible and because of which Jewish society had lost its way: “In our day, the lights have gone dark, and, like blind men, we do not know or understand what is in front of our face, and we grope in the darkness.” Henceforth this would be the rhetoric used by the Maskilim for more than a hundred years to point out the need for reform and to present themselves as those who light the correct path. Euchel argued that traditional education had failed and that the view that “only in the Talmud would they be regarded as succeeding” had caused ignorance and neglect of the Bible and the Mishnah, impoverishing knowledge of Hebrew. Euchel boasted that many people of Königsberg were on his side, but his plan never went beyond being a proposal.24 A Jewish stockbroker from Hamburg, Nathaniel Posner had no ambitions to reform the world. However, his head-on collision with the rabbi of the Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck community, Raphael Cohen, and with the religious court brought him to the center of an affair that found its way to the Danish government, echoes of which were heard in German public opinion. His fashionable way of life and dress (a wig, a hair bag, and a braid), his cleanshaven face, his attendance at the theater and balls, and his wife’s promenades with her women friends in a carriage in the streets of the city were all regarded as an expression of “free thought” and contempt for religion, worthy of punishment. When he openly expressed defiance in the Altona synagogue, saying that he did not recognize the authority of the rabbis and that the Torah “had fallen into the hands of thieves, cheats, scoundrels, and lying interpreters,” he was threatened with excommunication. Posner was asked to forsake his ostensibly wanton ways and his religious rebellion and to accept a ceremony

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of repentance. He was mainly required to grow his beard and no longer dress according to European fashions. The affair took on broad and principled importance when Rabbi Cohen demanded authorization to impose religious discipline from the Danish government, whereas August Cranz (1737–1801), one of the most vigorous spokesmen in German public opinion against religious fanaticism, expected that Denmark would defend the Jew, who was persecuted by the religious authorities.. Cranz protested against infringement of the value of tolerance “in the present century.” Posner himself complained about the harassment of his wife and himself, asking to be freed of the authority of the rabbinical court. Mendelssohn was apprehensive that publicizing the affair would damage the image of the Jews, and he criticized the rabbi for misusing “ecclesiastical authority.” Ultimately, Rabbi Cohen failed in his mission to deter members of the community from violating religious norms and defying the religion. The rebel himself went unpunished and did not give up his way of life, despite the threats. Although his appeal for independence from the community was not accepted, the authority of the rabbinical leadership to enforce discipline was restricted and made subject to confirmation by the state authorities.25 For Posner, this was primarily a protest against interference by the religious authority in his private life and a blow to his freedom to attain happiness in his chosen way. Toward the end of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant also confirmed his contemporaries’ desire for happiness: “Happiness, therefore, in exact proportion with the morality of rational beings who are made worthy of happiness by it, constitutes alone the supreme good of a world into which we must necessarily place ourselves according to the commands of pure but practical reason.” The moral commands of reason are not derived from religious principles.26 The tribunal of reason is therefore intended to examine and criticize the conduct of human society according to the criteria of humanistic morality. Several other test cases were placed before this tribunal. In Glarus, Switzerland, a servant, Anna Göldi (1734–1782), was put on trial for using witchcraft to harm the health of an eight-year-old girl and putting pins and nails in her food. After her arrest, she underwent harsh tortures and confessed that she was connected with the devil. She was executed by beheading. This was one of the last witch trials in Europe. Within a short time, the news was picked up in August Schlözer’s magazine, in which he followed the rapid changes in Europe of his time with critical curiosity. In a footnote that he attached to the story of Göldi, he expressed his revulsion. If the legal authorities themselves were responsible for punishing innocent people, their actions indeed deserved to be called by the new term of “judicial murder.”27

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While Göldi was being tortured so she would confess to her ties with the devil, the owner of the British slave ship Zong filed a suit in London for compensation for the loss of part of his cargo in a failed journey from West Africa to Jamaica. Only then, in early 1783, did one of the most horrifying incidents in the history of the trade in Black slaves begin to come to light, though it had taken place more than a year earlier, in the winter of 1781. Because of an error in navigation, traversing the middle passage had taken more than four months, and about 60 of the 442 captive slaves died of starvation and illness. By order of the captain, Luke Collingwood, between November 29 and December 1, 132 men, women, and children were thrown into the sea to their death. Ten of them leaped into the sea by themselves, committing suicide. This slaughter, which was explained by lack of drinking water, was intended to reduce financial loss and to make an insurance claim of thirty pounds per slave possible. Only these business considerations were at issue in the suit between the shipowners (a partnership of merchants in Liverpool) and the insurance company. The basic assumption was that the slaves were to be regarded as cargo. The judge, Lord Mansfield, even compared the Black slaves to horses. At first the jury ruled that the damage must be compensated, but an appeal brought negligence of the crew to light, and the decision was apparently reversed. Among the Jews, the attitude toward Black people and slavery occupied a marginal place, and it is difficult to respond to the curious question of whether the Jews felt superior as white people or whether, as a persecuted minority, they identified with the suffering of others. Comprehensive research by Jonathan Schorsch reveals not only the presence of slaves in Jewish households in the colonies of the New World such as Curaçao, Surinam, and Jamaica, but also their generally negative image of Blacks. However, other voices can be heard from the pages of the Haskalah library. On the one hand, an early Maskil, Judah Horowitz, has one of the characters in his book, ‘Amudei beit yehuda, entirely reject slavery as unacceptable. Even “a man as wild as a beast” can became a model of wisdom and moral virtues, and “one must not take a foreign person as a slave.” On the other hand, the science book of Baruch Linda, Reshit limudim (The Beginning of Studies), reinforced the negative image of Black people (“the filthy residents of the Hottentots at the end of Africa” compared to “the people of Europe who are beautiful in their looks”). Clear condemnations of slavery did not appear until the end of the century. Isaac Satanow, in his commentary on the Kuzari, disagreed with the views of Judah Halevi, who wrote that the “Negro . . . was not planned for more than receiving a human form, and their speech is the essence of this lack.” Satanow stood

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with the humanists of the eighteenth century, stating that because Europeans thought that the intellect of Black people was less developed, “they allowed them to be oppressed and sold them the way people sell cattle, because they thought they were like animals. However, the philosophers of our age designated them as human beings, like us, and therefore they forbade oppressing them.”28 But were the Jews themselves human beings? In Nathan the Wise, Lessing has Nathan ask, “What is a folk? Are Jews and Christians sooner Jew and Christian than man? ” But did this view have any real presence in public opinion? Was the leadership in Europe prepared to translate this idea into a fundamental change in the status of the Jews in the state and society? Mendelssohn wanted to believe that the answer was yes. For a while in 1782, this doubtful Jewish philosopher, who vacillated between dreams and disappointments, was swept away by great enthusiasm, if not true euphoria, and, as with his feeling in 1768, he once again was delighted by the privilege that had been his lot, to live in “happy times.” Mendelssohn thanked God for “the fortunate hour when attention was given to human rights to their full and correct extent.” At least in the history of religious tolerance, it was possible to point to a historical change of enormous significance: “The philosopher of the eighteenth century did not take note of differences in teachings and opinions and saw in the person only the person.” This was not just a general statement about the spirit of the age and about the increasing weight of intellectuals in public opinion. From Mendelssohn’s point of view, all the reformist trends and all humanitarian sentiments of the years 1781 and 1782 came together in a series of events, creating a single exciting crossroads and heralding the historical liberation of the Jews. From this moment on, Mendelssohn declared, “we must not demand human rights without demanding at the same time our own rights as well.” His dear friend Lessing, who had just died before his time, was “the philosophical poet” who paved the way with Nathan the Wise. The “philosopher of the eighteenth century” was Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751–1820), a young historian and jurist, a graduate of the University of Göttingen, and an admirer of Friedrich II who held important posts in the Prussian foreign office and was a member of Enlightenment circles in Berlin. In August 1781, he finished drafting a comprehensive and well-argued plan for the naturalization of the Jews of the state. “All my life I was distant from great men and their society,” Mendelssohn wrote, sharing with his readers his nearly messianic conviction that fateful days had come, and he could only stand at a distance to see “what will be the end of all this according to the will of wise and compassionate Providence.”29

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H e “R e mov ed a V ei l of Sh a m e from Us”: Doh m a n d th e R efor ms of Joseph II “This precious book wandered abroad and gave great honor to the lord, its author,” Euchel reported about Dohm’s bursting into the public sphere with his fundamental work, Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (On the Civil Improvement of the Jews). The first German edition, published in Berlin by Friedrich Nicolai, completely sold out. A French translation was completed shortly after the original was published, and many responses to it were collected and printed in separate volume accompanying the second edition, which appeared about two years later. Euchel stated that “all the readers sang the praises in a great public about the integrity of his heart in setting his eye upon a nation that was contemptible in the eyes of the nations.” Euchel ignored the critics and skeptics, but he was accurate in describing the great enthusiasm that gripped the Maskilim. For the first time, such a bright and clear voice was heard demanding that the state, which was moving toward reform, place the problem of the Jewish minority high on its agenda. Euchel recommended Dohm’s book to his readers: “I ask every Jewish person who knows how to read the German language, or who has someone who understands that language, to read his words or have them read to everyone with attention and diligence.”30 The emergence of On the Civil Improvement of the Jews represented intentional coordination between Strasbourg and Berlin; this was orchestrated in 1780 by Cerf Berr, the leader of the Jews of Alsace, and Mendelssohn and Dohm. Following the episode of the counterfeit receipts and the incitement by François Hell, and in the framework of Berr’s intervention to persuade the French authorities that the distress of the Jews was intolerable and deep reform was necessary (including, for example, abolition of the humiliating body tax that the Jews were required to pay upon entering the gates of Strasbourg), he asked Mendelssohn for assistance. Enlisting both a wealthy Jew who controlled an economic empire and had status in royal courts and an intellectual who had made his name in public opinion to exert pressure on the authorities shifted intercession to the arena of the struggle for justice and rights in the name of humanistic principles. It joined with the voices of protest against discrimination and oppression, against witch trials, and against the slave trade. When Mendelssohn was asked to assist in interceding, he agreed immediately; however, he entrusted composition of the memorandum to the French Council of State to his young colleague, Dohm, of the Enlightenment circles in Berlin. Dohm reported that he had been shocked to hear about the events in Alsace and about the counterfeit receipts plot. “I confess that such news is absolutely

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unbelievable in our time.” The memorandum provided the basis for the two hundred pages of his detailed and comprehensive book. In the introduction, which he finished in August 1781, Dohm joined his voice to humanistic discussion of the great injustice inherent in the hostile attitude toward the Jews. His intention was to conclude from “the miserable history” of the Jews, as he summarized his picture of the past and the future, “that the state of oppression in which they still live, in most countries, is nothing but a remnant of the superstitions of earlier, most benighted centuries, contrary to [political interests] and humanity.” In an almost exact quotation from Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, he proclaimed the slogan of tolerance: “The Jew is more a man than a Jew.”31 Dohm’s treatise was far more than another voice speaking sympathetically about the Jewish minority. The great significance of his trailblazing approach was in framing the problem of the Jews as a political issue. The political lexicon of state’s considerations and interests melded with the Enlightenment lexicon, which was sensitive to injustice and discrimination. Dohm thought about reform in historical dimensions and looked beyond Prussia and France to the broad map of the Jews in Poland and Sweden. He demanded great and principled action that would be no less than the reform of debased history. Placing the responsibility on the state both explained shameful past behavior, when Christianity dictated policy, and pointed to a solution in the future. As Robert Liberles pointed out, Dohm’s contribution to the debate was primarily in the role that he accorded to the state in improving the plight of the Jews.32 A state that recognizes the need for a large and productive population and for increasing economic welfare can no longer afford to leave a minority behind only because their customs are different. In the eighteenth century, the policy of exclusion was not practical, rational, or ethical, and it flew in the face of the natural rights of man as well as the true benefit of the state. In Dohm’s vision, secular citizenship, which strives for general welfare, would join every group together around it, as had happened recently in North America. The moment that Jews became aware of the improvement in the attitude toward them, they would replace their traditional subjection to rabbinical authority with patriotism for the state. To fulfill the vision of including the Jews in the state, deep intervention of the government was necessary, as well as willingness of the Jews themselves to undergo reeducation, adaptation to the needs of the state, and reform of the flaws that had clung to them (“their moral degradation”). Here Dohm laid out a detailed political plan: “How the Jews May Become Better and Happier Members of Civil Society.” Along with educating Christian society to throw off prejudices and hostility, he asserted, the state must open up possibilities for earning a living and encouraging movement from

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commerce to agriculture and the crafts; it must make rights equal, rescind discriminatory taxation and legislation, enlist Jews in the army, and direct them to general schools or to Jewish schools that would be established specially to provide necessary knowledge beyond the realm of Torah and Talmud. In the framework of enlightened politics, Dohm did not propose abolishing either communal autonomy or its judicial system, but he envisaged the birth of a new Jew, whose mind, along with the sanctified teachings of his ancestors, would be enlightened by the bright light of reason and whose heart would be warmed by the principles of order, integrity, and love for all human beings.33 Dohm’s reception among Jewish Maskilim was enthusiastic. It was understood by everyone that underlying this plan was the challenge of gaining rights and permissions in return for willingness to undergo deep change. Wessely drew encouragement from it for his plan to establish modern Jewish schools, and, with excitement, he discerned a historical turning point. “The minister, Kriegsrat Dohm,” he said, “challenged the kingdom of those who rule us harshly . . . and he was praised by ministers of the state and the wise men of the nations, and if someone had written such a thing two hundred years ago, what would people have said of him?” This awareness of dramatic change and admiration for the man who had proposed it in the arena of public opinion led the Levi Benjamin family, leaders in the Breslau community, to change their family name from Shipra to Dohm. The Berlin community gave Dohm silver vessels as a birthday present, and a letter of thanks signed in Paramaribo (March 1786) by prominent Sephardi intellectual and revolutionary David Nassy (1747–1806) even reached him from the Portuguese community in Surinam.34 Mendelssohn also was lavish in the praise he heaped upon Dohm. However, this time as well, his fortunate hour was relatively short. His mood changed when he read a critical article by Johann David Michaelis. This scholar from Göttingen, who in the 1750s refused to acknowledge that there really existed a Jew with high virtues such as those Lessing depicted in The Jews, now cast doubt on the Jews’ ability to integrate into the state, as Dohm proposed. He argued that their religion, their low ethical character, and their messianic belief in the return to the Land of Israel would never make it possible to trust them as loyal citizens. There was no better proof of the damage they caused than their large numbers among the gangs of thieves in Germany. He estimated that, although the Jews were only a quarter of a percent of the population, they constituted 50 percent of the robber gangs. Purporting to be an expert in Judaism, Michaelis stated that the “law of Moses” made military service impossible, and its only purpose was to isolate the Jews, not to integrate them. Hence, implementation

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of Dohm’s plan would achieve the absolute opposite of its aim: it would weaken and damage the state. Once again, Mendelssohn’s confidence in a change of traditional attitudes sank, and once again, a searing insult burned within him. In his short response, which was published in the second of Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, he defended the integrity and decency of the poor and he proclaimed that the hoped-for return to the Land of Israel, “which caused such concern for Mr. Michaelis,” had no influence on their civil behavior, because it was not realistic. He rejected the distinction between Germans and Jews, which accentuated segregation and foreignness, rather than the distinction between Christians and Jews. In frustration and disappointment, Mendelssohn asked, “How many thousands of years must this attitude of the lord of the land to the alien persevere? Would it not be better to forget this difference for the good and benefit of humanity and culture?” In a sarcastic footnote, he responded to Michaelis’s claim that military service required tall men: Jewish soldiers would be “of the appropriate size . . . if they were not to be used only against dwarf enemies or against Jews.”35 Michaelis represented the conservative position that Jews could not be reformed. However, at least in 1781 and 1782, it appeared that this voice was silenced by the wave of enthusiasm aroused by the news from the court of Joseph II in Vienna. On the Civil Improvement of the Jews was in print, but Dohm managed to include an excited note on the last page: “The author of this book feels, at the hour of its printing, great pleasure in reading in the press that the Jews in the Empire are about to receive the rights of other citizens.” According to rumor, “this edict, though it has not yet been promulgated, will appear very soon, and its directives will be almost entirely attuned to those that we have dared to propose in this book.” The convergence in the fall of 1781 of the philosophical-political work, which proposed a new plan for inclusion of the Jews in the states of Europe, and detailed legislation relating to the Jews of the Habsburg Empire was a surprising implementation of Dohm’s far-reaching vision, which, even before its publication, had already found willing ears. If the news was correct, with bated breath, Dohm allowed himself to imagine a vision of the future, for in a short while, the multitude would enjoy “the happiness of society.”36 For a long time, Joseph had prepared himself for the moment when he would stand at the head of the empire as the sole ruler. During the years when he shared power with Maria Theresa, he traveled the length and breadth of the empire, met aristocrats and peasants, took note of problems and weaknesses, and made plans. As soon as his mother cleared the way for him, the taut spring was freed, and the heady Josephine decade began. Thousands of directives

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and edicts were promulgated from Vienna, and these were sparked not only by consideration for senior officials but also by an optimistic faith in the possibility of effecting change in the subjects’ lives. For Joseph II, the state meant everything, almost to an obsessive extent. Tim Blanning argued that the state built by Joseph II was intended to be united, with permanent and uniform standards. Regardless of regions of residence, social status, ethnic origin, or religious affiliation, the citizens of the state were all expected to contribute to the best of their abilities. In his testament of 1781, Joseph II wrote his famous sentence, which was interpreted as the byword of enlightened absolutism: “I was the first servant of the state.”37 The high point of his reforms was his opening the gates to non-Catholics to integrate into the state; they no longer had to fear restrictions and discrimination. The decree of tolerance (October 13, 1781) for Calvinists, Lutherans, and Greek Orthodox ordered, among other things, that in any place with more than five hundred inhabitants, it would be permitted to erect a church and worship freely. Although Catholicism remained dominant as the religion of the state, this was without doubt a dramatic change in Habsburg policy. An additional step in the policy of tolerance was the weakening of censorship. In the spirit of the Age of Criticism, as Kant termed it in the same year, the new laws stated that criticism was no longer forbidden, as long as it was not slanderous. Joseph II was not a religious skeptic, and his attitude toward religion was very far from that of Friedrich II. His aspiration, as a believing Christian, was to restore the Church to its pure source before it became a political sovereign and property owner. However, the policy of making the Church subordinate to the state, severing the Austrian clergy from Rome, and reducing the number of monasteries alarmed the pope.38 The Church’s legate in Vienna sent a letter on July 29, 1781, sharing with Pius VI the shocked apprehension and sense of emergency that had gripped monks and nuns, among others. From all the information he was sending, the pope would certainly understand “how the state of the Church and the religion was worsening from day to day.” The new and surprising edicts were a campaign against the Church and the authority of the priests, and the worst of all these wicked deeds was the permission to print anything, even against Christianity. Taking an exceptional step that revealed the gravity of the dispute, the concerned pope traveled to Vienna. Jewish contemporary historian Abraham Trebitsch was aware of the significance of the visit and recorded it in his Hebrew chronicle: “In the year 5542, which was March 22, 1782, the Pope of Rome, Pius VI, came to him in Vienna to consult in secret.” To no avail, the pope implored the emperor to withdraw his policy of religious tolerance and

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actions against the Church. “I was a good Catholic before he came, and there was no need for him to convert me,” Joseph II observed sarcastically.39 Before the pope’s visit, Joseph II had already signed the first of his nine decrees of tolerance for the Jewish minority in various regions of the empire. The first directives announcing the new policy were issued from the court in May 1781 and mainly emphasized the intention of requiring the Jews to use German in their official documents and opening the regular schools to them. Shifting the Jews from commerce, which was regarded as responsible for forming their low moral character, to the trades and agriculture, which were regarded as productive occupations, was one of the goals through which it would be possible to reform Jewish society in depth and prepare them for citizenship. All the decrees of tolerance were good expressions of this primary goal of Austrian enlightened absolutism. Concepts from the Enlightenment lexicon and belief in the supreme importance of the state combined in the declarative statements included in the legislation. The instructions to the Jews of Bohemia (October 19, 1781) were defined as an “edict for better education and enlightenment.” The purpose of the edict for the Jews of Vienna and Lower Austria (January 2, 1782) was “to make the Jewish nation more useful to the state, mainly by study and good enlightenment for the youth and by directing them to the sciences, arts, and crafts.” Joseph II proclaimed that it was his wish that henceforth the Jews should take “a shared place in the welfare of the public, which we wish to increase,” and that they should enjoy “freedom according to law.” The liberating character of the edicts was visible in the abolition of the humiliating body tax and cancellation of the restrictions imposed by Maria Theresa: as a result of “the present changes, the most recent decree on the Jews of May 5, 1764, has entirely lost its relevance.” For example, paragraph 24 announced that “in general, [the obligation to display] all the segregating identifying marks that were in force up to now such as the obligation to grow a beard was revoked, as well as the prohibition of going out before noon on Sundays and [Christian] holidays, and the prohibition against frequenting places of public entertainment.”40 We may assume that the people of the time noticed very well that, despite the ceremonial declarations of freedom, quite a few of the former restrictions remained in force, and the edicts of toleration explicitly lay down red lines that they had no intention of crossing. For example, the state would not permit the presence of an organized Jewish community in Vienna, nor would it permit the erection of a public synagogue. Supervision of the Jewish population was as strict as before, especially against foreigners who stole into the city. The communities of Bohemia and Moravia were still oppressed by the draconian

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restrictions enacted in the 1720s that limited marriage licenses for young couples according to quotas and criteria (Familianten Gesetz) and punished secret marriages.41 It is also hard to ignore the appearance of pamphlets in Vienna and Prague expressing suspicious public opinion and warning (as in the dispute over the Jew Law in England) against the danger of opening the gates to the Jews, for now they would win in commercial competition; they even proposed deporting the Jews to a barren land.42 However, despite these reservations, it seems that the Jews who welcomed Joseph II’s legislation as an enormous historical change appreciated, above all, the enormous historical change in rehabilitating their trampled honor. They heard the footsteps of salvation in abolishing the humiliating body taxes, as Trebitsch emphasized: Joseph II “removed a veil of shame from us, abolished the body tax in all the large cities, where until now the Jews had to raise the money, permitting them markets in Vienna, and in all of the state of Austria, and they are permitted to travel and to enter with full freedom. . . . He liberated the oppressed.”43 Indeed, the edicts of toleration were earthshaking. For example, Mendelssohn was curious, alert, and tense. He had heard that at least with respect to the reform in Jewish education and the establishment of German-Jewish elementary schools based on the Normalschulen (normal school) principle, the willingness to cooperate was not great. In a letter to the secretary of the Trieste community, Israel Galiko, on May 7, 1782, he wrote, “I am very eager to hear from your precious honor how far things have gone in your region, what bylaws you have passed to educate Jewish youths, whether the foundations of the normal schools have been laid and the basis has been formed as ordered by the lord.” Mendelssohn wrote those words under the influence of the culture war set off by Wessely with Divrei shalom veemet and his call to exploit the governmental policy of reform to rehabilitate Jewish education from the ground up. The correspondence between Trieste and Berlin took place via a new channel that had been opened up, linking Maskilim in Berlin to Italian Jews who supported the emperor’s policy. In the communities of Trieste, Mantua Gradisca, and Gorizia, which were under Habsburg rule and numbered only about 15 percent of the thirty thousand Jews of Italy, in fact there was no need for special decrees of toleration, but only to ratify the existing situation. The Austrian governor in Trieste, Karl von Zinzendorf, in correspondence with Vienna, pointed out that the Jews in that free port city already enjoyed everything that the decrees of toleration were meant to promise, and they did not suffer from discrimination as in other regions.44

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The letter that Elia Morpurgo (1830–1740), the merchant, scholar, and leader of the community of Gradisca, on the shores of the Adriatic, wrote to Mendelssohn at that time also fired up his excitement. Morpurgo wrote that he was entirely enchanted by the emperor, and he told his ally in Berlin about his visit to Vienna a decade earlier: “I fell at the feet of the righteous emperor Joseph, who received me graciously and mercifully, beyond what can be written, and from that day on I thanked him and blessed his name, and there was something like a burning fire in my heart, that I couldn’t contain.” When the decrees of tolerance were published, he was overwhelmed and waxing enthusiastic about the reforms he wrote: “Now I thank the Lord that by His grace He placed it in the heart of the emperor to benefit our nation.” He shared with the rabbi of Reggio, Israel Benjamin Bassan (1701–1790), the messianic meaning of the appearance of Joseph II on the stage of history: “Yea, now that days of peace have come, the days of remembrance came, when the Lord remembered His nation to give them the bread of wisdom and liberty with the edicts of our king, the wise, righteous, and merciful emperor.”45 Opening the new schools under the aegis of the state was without a doubt the most concrete expression of the reforms. The first of these were already established in Prague, Trieste, and Lwow in 1782, and in the following decade, thousands of Jews studied in about two hundred German-Jewish schools in Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Galicia, and Italy. The new schools were intentionally restricted to the acquisition of basic, useful skills—reading, writing, and arithmetic— whereas Torah studies continued in the traditional institutions. Thus, to a great degree, tension was reduced between the modern schools and the rabbinical elite, and the boundaries of the religion were vigilantly preserved.46 Therefore, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau could accept the reform policies, take part in the inauguration of a school on May 2, 1782, and even encourage the members of his community to support the emperor. Rabbi Landau’s sermon for Shabbat Hagadol in 5542 (1782) in the Prague synagogue was restrained. He expressed gratitude “that our lord, his highness the emperor has set it in his heart to benefit our nation and raise us up from our low estate. May God reward him for his good deed and raise his fame higher and higher, for how great is his goodness and mercy.” However, he also emphasized the spirit of the coming Passover holiday, noting that nothing had changed in the existence of the Jewish people. Redemption had not yet come, and consciousness of servitude and exile must continue to accompany us, he said. Exposure to education that was not in the Torah demanded great caution, especially in the new circumstances, “where Jews who deny the words of the Sages of blessed memory have increased, and people intend to deny the Oral Law to their sons.” Therefore, we must supervise

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the teachers closely, he said, to make sure that they don’t make bad use of their position. In his sermon, Rabbi Landau warned his listeners and expressed his concern: “I do not suspect the new school teachers that, perish the thought, they might do such an unacceptable thing, for that is against the wishes of the high government that established the schools, they must just teach the boys how to write and the German language and arithmetic and words of ethics and good deportment, but not to speak ill of our religion.”47 Two works showering extravagant praise on the emperor were published in German in that year: Solomon and Joseph II by Rabbi Isaac Alexander of Regensburg and a family play by Nathan Benedict David Arnstein (1765–1840). Arnstein, who was just seventeen, was the grandson of wealthy Viennese banker Asher Ben Adam Arnstein. The title of the play almost says it all: Several Jewish family scenes on the meaning of the edict on liberties that the Jews received in the lands of the emperor. The play begins with the son waving the edict in the air, and his father responds, “Is it really possible? Have I really lived to this joyous day?” Joy inundated the members of the bourgeois Jewish family in the play. Young Arnstein believed that now the “golden age of Joseph’s rule” had come, and he left behind “the barbaric age” and “the old days of fanaticism.”48

Th e Water sh ed: T wo Points of V i e w a n d Thr e e Fu n da m enta l Te xts The significance of 1781–1782 in the story of Jewish modernization has not evaded historians’ eyes. Even those who didn’t bring parallel events into the picture of the past, such as the persecution of Posner in Hamburg and the renewal of the struggle against Hasidism in Lithuania, shared the feeling of the people of the time, who regarded the announcement of reforms on the part of the state as a decisive change in the fate of the Jews, and they attributed importance to the appearance of the Haskala movement at the same time. Jacob Katz already marked out the 1780s as a turning point in the story of tradition and change. In his opinion, the moment in the social history of the Jews when the Maskilim in Germany took on their special features and began to demand the right to lead the community was also the peak in the crisis of the disintegration and collapse of traditional society.49 David Sorkin singled out Dohm as inaugurating the age of emancipation in Germany and as opening the discussion of granting political rights in the state in return for self-rehabilitation and correction of the flawed character of the Jews and their limited education. Jay Berkovitz showed how, in the 1780s, even before the revolution, the Jews of France faced the test of citizenship, the essence of which was to redefine their

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attitude to the surrounding society and prove their willingness to accept new obligations toward their country of birth. With respect to the Austrian empire, Michael Silber has pointed out that its roughly 350,000 Jews broke out into the modern age as a result of Joseph’s reforms. At least in the 1780s, it appeared that Austria, in particular, far more than Prussia or France, for example, was leading in the processes of change. In David Ruderman’s broad view, 1780 was indeed a watershed. “The primary ingredient of a modern Jewish culture,” he claimed, “is the changing political landscape of western and eastern Europe as it affected the Jews.” At that historical moment, when the Maskilim proposed a political agenda for Jewish modernization and enlightened absolutism began to shape a new policy, in fact the early modern age came to an end.50 In the eyes of the people of the time, these changes appeared to be far more complex than the political turning that later historians discerned. Two inner points of view contribute to the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century, showing sensitivity to the historical significance of the early 1780s. The first is that of Trebitsch, who pointed to a double development: expansion of the Jewish bookshelf at home and change in policy from without. When he distinguished between the cultural creations of two competing elites—the rabbinical elite and the Maskilim—Trebitsch pointed out with pride that in the world of the Jewish book, rabbinical masterpieces by “brilliant scholars” such as Jonathan Eybeschütz, Rabbi Landau, Pinchas Horowitz, and Rabbi Cohen had appeared, as had works by Wessely, Satanow, and Mendelssohn, “who was precious and honored in the eyes of ministers and nations.” In parallel, the countries of Europe were governed by exceptional rulers, most prominent of whom was Joseph II. He spoke with admiration about the great reforms that Joseph II had sponsored in almost every area of activity in the state, about his determined leadership, and about his daring to change traditional patterns. First of all, his policy, as noted, restored self-respect to the Jews. The price was not low; a number of factors contributed to the reduction in religious commitment, including the emperor’s intervention in the life of the Jews, the growing demand for modern education and a knowledge of the language of the country, and the restrictions on judgment according to Torah law. With the acute perception of the historian of his own time, he understood that this was not an intentional anti-Jewish trend, but rather part of a general policy to transfer the center of gravity from religion to the state. However, this insight also points to one of the channels of secularization.51 The second inner viewpoint was that of Wessely, who sought to place his plan for modern Jewish education in the general context of the Jewish world of his time. In 1782, he, too, shared in the wave of great expectations pinned on the

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emperor in Vienna, believing that a historical turning point had been reached before the eyes of his contemporaries. He saw even farther than Trebitsch, and his optimism was greater than that of both Mendelssohn and Morpurgo. Enthralled by the events of his day, he believed that humanity was on the verge of a transformation that would do away with religious conflict and set it on the course of tolerance, peace among nations, and love of mankind. He regarded Joseph II’s ascent to the stage of history as a foundational event similar to the invention of printing and the discovery of America.52 According to his progressive picture of history, this was the culmination of a process that had matured over at least two hundred years, creating unprecedented opportunities for the Jews. First Holland was a pioneer in religious tolerance. It opened its gates as a refuge for Sephardi Jews at the end of the sixteenth century, followed immediately by England, whose ministers, in the mid-seventeenth century, “called out to us in peace and gave us permission to live securely in their land.” Among the states of Germany, the king of Prussia was the first to offer freedom and tolerance. Completely ignoring Friedrich II’s selective and discriminatory legislation, Wessely praised him: “Our lord, his highness, the king of Prussia, raised the prestige of his kingdom with his wisdom and heroism, since the wisdom and intelligence of this king are very broad, may he be a model for kings, both in wisdom in war and in wisdom in leading people and ways of courtesy among states.” In his opinion, Friedrich II was the first ruler in Europe to adopt the principle of liberty and to see “that it was proper for a king to rule over free people, and not over slaves to slaves . . . and that [it] is impossible to increase wisdom and knowledge in a state, if the people are afraid to tell the truth . . . and he stood up and blocked entry to hostility and persecution, and he also allowed everyone to compose and write whatever arose in the fortress of his mind from the sea of wisdom.”53 In his opinion, other rulers also had joined in Europe’s great transformation. Six years before the revolution, he praised “the great and mighty and beloved king Louis XVI,” and a decade before the National Assembly passed the law emancipating the Jews, he praised the good attitude that he and his ministers displayed toward the Jews. In this honored pantheon of rulers who were favorable to the Jews, Wessely included Katherine II, Christian VII of Denmark, and Gustav III of Sweden, as well as the king of Poland, Stanislaw Poniatowski, whom he credited (apparently on the basis of what he had heard from Mendelssohn) with abolition of blood libels.54 Even before the first Jewish newspaper was established, Wessely took upon himself the role of the journalist who reported on the state of the Jews in the world. This was a critical report pointing out differences and failures, consistent

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with his view that entry in the new age required a different arrangement than in the past. His intended audience was the rabbinical leadership of the Ashkenazi communities in Central and Eastern Europe. He wanted to show that the problem of literacy and limited culture—that is to say, ignorance of the language of the surroundings and of knowledge that wasn’t related to Torah, as well as poor command of Hebrew—mainly existed “in the lands of the Ashkenazim,” unlike the Sephardi Jews, “who live in the lands of the east and speak with the people of their country properly in Turkish and Arabic.” Among the Jews of Italy, England, and France, knowledge of the language of the country was prevalent, “and even our brethren in the countries of Poland speak with the people of their country properly in the Polish language.”55 Wessely particularly admired the Sephardi community in Amsterdam. He apparently met Jewish merchants from Muslim countries and was impressed by their knowledge of languages: “Similarly, this advantage [of knowing languages] of our brethren the children of Israel in the East, the Maghreb, and Yemen, in Italy, Syria, and Armenia, and in the Land of Israel, and Assyria, and Babylonia, and all the communities of Israel on the coast of the Mediterranean, from Egypt to Tunis and Algeria, to the end of the Maghreb, which is the kingdom of Morocco, most of them speak the Spanish and Turkish language well, and many of them also speak Italian and French.”56 Wessely proclaimed that the end of the period of persecution had come, although people everywhere were not aware of the historical change. In the distinctions he made within the Jewish Diaspora, he pointed out the gap between communities that were still living in the past and those that already lived in the present and were facing the future. In his view, his home city of Berlin was exceptional. It was a community that had already reached the modern age and could serve as a model for others. A modern school was already in operation there (the Freischule), offering general studies in the afternoons. Many were knocking at its doors, and its first graduates finished their studies in 1782 and were succeeding in life. Berlin was also a center for well-known scholars, who expanded Jewish culture and brought great honor.57 Trebitsch took note of a cultural renaissance in politics, tolerance, and secularization, while Wessely was one of the first to formulate a picture of the past, in the center of which was the birth of a new age, both as a distinct period in history and as a challenge. From his dwelling place in Berlin, in the spirit of the age of criticism, he did believe in an exceptional opportunity to correct the flaws that had clung mainly to traditional education, and he also identified the obstacles. He took attitudes to the reforms of Joseph II to be a test case. He wrote to the heads of the Trieste community: “When news reached us that the Lord spoke well of Israel and placed a wise king on the

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throne, whose whole tendencies are to break the staves of our yoke, we were greatly pleased.” But, to his distress, “writings have come from the cities of Vilna and Prague, that our brethren sit and weep and call for a fast, and it is an hour of sorrow in their eyes, and this is all because of the word of the kingdom, that came from his highness the emperor, that they must teach their sons the language of the country, to speak it clearly.” Thus a cultural schism also yawned in contradictory understanding of the historical process. He accused mainly the Jews of Poland, and he expected the communities of Italy to stand by him and express support.58 Three foundational texts were published, expressing hope that the Jewish brethren would not stand idly by but would exploit the new trends to effect a deep inner change in consciousness and culture. These three texts, published in Prussia, were milestones in the history of the Haskalah movement and reached beyond the borders of Prussia. Wessely himself wrote the first of them, Divrei shalom veemet, published in January 1782, soon after publication of the edict of tolerance for the Jews of Vienna, for the purpose of swaying Jewish public opinion to support it. His neighbor, Mendelssohn, wrote the second text (the introduction to the letter of Menasseh Ben Israel) in March, mainly in response to Dohm. The third was a pamphlet by Euchel, Nah.al habesor (The Herald Spring), which announced that in December, the Haskalah movement was established in Königsberg. Ten days before the end of 5542, on August 30, 1782, David Tevele Schiff (?–1792), the rabbi of London, wrote a letter to his brother Meir in Frankfurt, relating the dramatic events that took place following the publication of Wessely’s Divrei shalom veemet in the beginning of the year, including the sensational news that Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Levin had fled from Berlin about a month earlier, on July 24. Levin left an exceptional and surprising letter of resignation to his community, in which he announced, with pain, that things had come to such a pass that he could no longer withstand the contradictory pressures exerted on him: “Everyone here already knows about the rabbi’s departure from there. I saw a copy of the letter the rabbi left before his departure, to be opened six days after he left the city, and it is heard that he went to Vienna, and the meaning of the letter is that his intention is to go to the Holy Land.” Schiff reported: I also saw a copy of what Rabbi [Tevele] of the community of Lissa wrote on this subject, to revile and curse Rabbi Herz Wessely and to scorn the epistle that he published . . . and in Vilna, according to the orders of the renowned righteous man our master Rabbi Eliajah [the Vilna Gaon] that they burned

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the epistle of Rabbi Herz Wessely in the street, and it was even said there that the rabbi of the holy community of Prague [Rabbi Landau] first gave a sermon about that in Prague. However, now he must keep silence in public, and he does his deeds in secret to thunder to the other rabbis of the famous communities.59

A great deal about the course of this incident and its significance are conveyed by this letter. It testifies to the echoes that came from Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and England to the text that was published in Berlin. Whereas Wessely proposed a new path for his people and expected encouragement and praise, the rabbinical elite responded with dread, communicating the news among its members in Europe that the Jewish religion was endangered. Divrei shaleom veemet, an open letter calling for placing Jewish education on two legs—the Torah of the Lord and the Torah of mankind—and for a positive response to Joseph II’s initiative became controversial. It offered a clear direction for the Haskalah movement while it waged the first culture war and contributed to raising the barriers between the rabbinical leadership and the modern Jewish intellectuals. Divrei shalom veemet sought to transform the foundation of traditional values and pointed out the errors of the Jewish leadership and the failure of traditional education. Wessely’s deep faith that a dramatic historical change was taking place before the eyes of his generation aroused him to make a subversive move. He bypassed the traditional authorities and sought to enlist Jewish public opinion to support his plan. For example, a critical sentence is hidden at the end of the first chapter: “Someone ignorant of the laws of God, who knows the Torah of mankind, even though he does not enjoy the light of the Sages of Israel and the wisdom of the Torah, the rest of human beings from all the nations will benefit from him, and he who is ignorant of the Torah of mankind, even if he knows the laws of God, he brings joy neither to the sages of his nation nor to the rest of humanity.”60 Taking a revolutionary step, Divrei shalom veemet challenged the foundations of the traditional ethos borne by the rabbinical elite and the scholars of “the laws of God.” He pointed out an enormous historical error and the grave decline in the status of the Jews in the world, sharing with the reader the feeling of inferiority and indignity and the desire to rehabilitate Jewish honor.61 In response to the opposition against him, expressed in several severe sermons and especially in that of Rabbi Tevele of Lissa, who told Wessely not to mix into an area for which the rabbinical elite was solely responsible, he published a second pamphlet, entitled Rav tuv livnei Yisrael (Great Benefit to the Children of Israel), in the beginning of the summer of that year. This time

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there was no mistaking the rebellious spirit that throbbed in it, which had been kindled by the insults he had received: I have heard the infamy of these rabbis and their imprecations. . . . They secretly whisper and dispatch letters of hostility from one to another. And I will place a barrier before my mouth, not because I have dread of a rabbi who might reprimand me, because I never learned a thing from them or from their like, for the little I have was taught to me by my kidneys, with the help of Him who teaches man wisdom. Nor [do I fear] the title of rabbi, for that title is no testimony to greatness of soul. . . . And what has the rabbinate to do with this matter? We are all ordinary people before the Lord our God and before His Torah.62

This occurred at the same time as another radical outburst of the self and also the declaration of independence of a Maskil, who defended his right to free himself from rabbinical authority, and in this respect, it was an expression of the ethos of the Jewish Enlightenment. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Divrei shalom veemet as an appeal that became an event in its own right. The small pamphlet aroused great attention and ignited a tempestuous and prolonged dispute, and its aftereffect as a pioneering manifesto of modern education and of Haskalah lasted for generations. Its reverberations were heard far beyond Prussia and the synagogues of Prague and Lissa, where furious sermons were preached against it. August Kranz, who had spoken out about the injustice committed by the rabbi of Hamburg against Nethaniel Posner, published the news about the persecution of Wessely by the rabbis of Poland as an example of the misuse of religious power, “in our enlightened days,” to suppress freedom of expression. Within a few months, Divrei shalom veemet was translated into German, French, Dutch, and Italian.63 Wessely’s great admirer, Morpurgo, was the Italian translator, as part of his defense against his opponents. Agitated and moved, he wrote: “My face fell, and my ears rang, upon hearing that this book was persecuted in Prague and by three rabbis of Poland, who burned it.” Wessely addressed the communities of Italy and their rabbis to gain support in public opinion. He believed that the alliance between Berlin and Italy could prevail and enlist widespread support.64 In Berlin. Mendelssohn joined hands with David Friedländer and five other colleagues in a threatening letter sent on May 15, 1782, to the community of Lissa, whose rabbi, Tevele, was one of Wessely’s most radical critics. They would not permit persecution of Wessely, and they would take every means to prevent it— even direct appeal to the king of Poland. The consequences of the affair affected

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the general good, “and so that the community of the Jews might not be shamed, and the Torah of the Lord not be disgraced, if, perish the thought, you do not heed our advice, we will bring the matter to trial before the rulers of the land.”65 Mendelssohn finished the introduction to his German translation of the apologetic work Vindiciae judaeorum (The Hope of Israel), written by Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel (1605–1657) in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, on March 19, 1782, before the affair of Divrei shalom veemet broke out.66 Like Wessely, he was enormously optimistic. His introduction was daring, and it is no exaggeration to say it was a radical document that sketched a vision of Jewish life in the modern age. In it, the Jewish philosopher called on the rabbinical leaders to give up their supervisory authority. The work went overboard in its self-confidence, directness, and even aggression toward every phenomenon that was inconsistent with the standards of Enlightenment. This was nourished by the feeling that “the wind of conciliation and love” was blowing in the public climate. The book’s introduction was a liberal call for the unconditional granting of civil rights to the Jews, as justified by the free market, even without paying the price of reform and improvement demanded by Dohm and Joseph II; it was also a polemical work furiously attacking the secularization of prejudices against the Jews. Mendelssohn grumbled that while the Jews were no longer being accused of ritual murder, witchcraft, and poisoning the well, they were now being accused of not being suited to the new world, of being “immersed in ignorance,” of lacking “moral sensitivity, good taste, and proper manners,” and of not being “capable of crafts and useful nationalism, especially for service in war and to the state.” The actual purpose of these arguments was to continue segregating the Jews because of hostility and suspicion, which had not faded. He also directed criticism inward. Dohm’s agreement to maintain communities with the authority to punish contradicted Mendelssohn’s vision of the future, in which the Jews would attain double emancipation: they would be citizens of the state and free of religious coercion by the rabbis of the communities. In Mendelssohn’s opinion, Dohm’s willingness to leave the existing situation intact and permit religious autonomy was contrary to the principles of religious tolerance and to Judaism as a religion that did not advocate coercion. “Civil happiness” cannot exist when religion enjoys governmental power. In apparent contradiction to the beginning of the work, in which he expressed enthusiasm for the historical transformation that was taking place in his time, he commented skeptically that “reason and the spirit of investigation of our century have not yet completely erased the traces of the barbarism of history.”67 Even before the wave of protest that rose against Wessely, when Mendelssohn heard the disturbing news about the excommunication of Posner in

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Hamburg, he demanded the denial to religion in general and to the Jewish religion in particular of the prerogative of punishment. “I see no possibility of blocking with bit and reins the fanaticism of false religion,” he wrote in fear, for “the priests of the religion are not yet so enlightened, that it is possible to entrust such a right to them, without danger.”68 It soon became clear that Mendelssohn would pay a heavy price for revealing his opinions in this introduction. Another publication, the anonymous response of Cranz, brought Mendelssohn back to the nightmare of the Lavater affair. Das Forschen nacht Licht und Recht (The Search for Light and Justice), published on June 12, 1782, struck him hard. Mendelssohn’s arguments for religious tolerance in the introduction were interpreted as a crossing of the lines toward Christianity. In Cranz’s opinion, the contradiction between the Jewish religion and its commandments and Mendelssohn’s words was so apparent that one could not understand why the Jewish philosopher did not deny his religion or at least present himself as the leader of the great revolution of revocation of the duties of religion, which block the naturalization of the Jews in the state.69 At the end of the year that had begun with Wessely’s controversial challenge in Divrei shalom veemet and the doctrine of tolerance in Mendelssohn’s “Introduction,” the H.evrat dorshei leshon ‘ever (The Society for the Hebrew Language), the kernel of the Haskalah movement, was established on December 12, 1782, in Königsberg. The first step it took was to ask Wessely for his support and to propose printing his poems and articles in a publication, which they were about to inaugurate. Within a few months, Euchel and Mendel Bresslau, the editors of the new Hebrew publication, Hameasef, issued an appeal with the title Nah. al habesor, proclaiming a cultural revolution. Along with the ideas about tolerance expressed by Mendelssohn, the philosopher, and the establishment of schools in the spirit of Joseph II and Wessely’s plans for educational reform, a framework was established uniting the sponsors of Hebrew literary creativity and the advocates of reform of Jewish society. After two generations of early Maskilim who dreamed of expanding the boundaries of Jewish culture, several young students and teachers, born in the 1750s and 1760s, indeed established the modern Jewish Republic of Letters.70 At that moment in Königsberg, in the winter of 1782, Euchel, a twenty-sixyear-old student, took the initiative to offer a modern communication network “to every Maskil seeking truth and loving science.” While Mendelssohn, in his introduction, had made his declaration of independence as the one who was promoting humanistic Judaism and challenged the rabbinical leadership, which sought to retain the authority to supervise and punish, and while Wessely, in Divrei shalom veemet, did not hesitate to declare publicly that he would continue

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in his efforts to persuade his brothers to accept the modern educational system that he proposed in spite of those who persecuted and condemned him, in Nah. al habesor, a group of Maskilim organized in their own independent framework. This appeal, like the texts of Wessely and Mendelssohn, relied on the awareness that in 1782, history was moving with impetus toward beneficent changes. The enthusiastic rhetoric conveyed consciousness of a mission, which was formulated in this text in terms of expectations for redemption: “Come, brothers! Let each man place his hand in that of his brother, and let us walk together and seek the treasure that is worth all wealth, men of truth will light the path until from above the light of the sun of justice shines on us and becomes the light of the world.”71 This was a manifesto that announced the opening of the ranks to all who were interested in contributing to cultural renewal. It mainly addressed the young, but it depended on the achievements of veteran Maskilim. Their turning to Wessely as the senior member of the Maskilim on December 26, 1782, filled him with the feeling of success, which he needed so badly at the end of that tempestuous year72 He encouraged the initiative of the youth and exalted them as pioneers in bringing the light of Haskalah to Jewish society: “Be strong and brave, be, in the depth of this light, the first of all the young men of Israel to shine upon us with the light of truth and good inquiry . . . may you roam as a multitude and increase knowledge.”73

“Th at W ick ed M a n!”: A T u r n in th e Dispu te Though he was very sensitive to the criticism voiced against him and insisted that his educational reform drew on the tradition and broke through no boundaries, Wessely was a cultural revolutionary. He defended himself and even retreated from a radical interpretation of Divrei shalom veemet, but he also defied his attackers and declared that he was independent and not subject to the rabbinical elite.74 His self-assurance was based, among other things, on the transformations that had already taken place in 1782. He pointed out the achievements of the Freischule in Berlin, and he certainly knew about the first German-Jewish schools under Joseph II, which were inaugurated that year. In Prague, Lwow, Trieste, and elsewhere, schools were opened with impressive ceremonies. Jews took off work, and senior officials of the Austrian government joined with community leaders and rabbis, giving enthusiastic speeches and congratulating the Jews for the great innovation, emphasizing the historical change and the opportunity opened up for the advancement of the Jews in the empire. Newspapers reported on these ceremonies in a manner similar

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to celebrations of military victories or the coronation of rulers—with prayer, song, and blessings for the welfare of the emperor.75 In fact, Wessely’s vision encountered stiff opposition. As shown by a proclamation issued by the community of Prossnitz in Moravia, for example, it was necessary to implore parents and even threaten them to make them send their children to the new school: “Thus, we warn the fathers to send their sons at the appointed time to the normal school, and those who violate this will be punished with the punishment decreed by the law.”76 Sermons against Wessely given in several synagogues expressed suspicion and hostility, and with every sort of slander. Rabbi Pinchas Halevi Horowitz of Frankfurt welcomed the rumors that fanatics had burned Divrei shalom veemet in Vilna, and he condemned the author as a heretic who was ruining traditional education: “For he gripped the pupils of the rabbi’s house to divert them from the path of the Lord to that path of heresy.” Horowitz explained the grave rumors about the reform to his listeners, adding in fury, “The only concern of that wicked man is to keep them out of school [and preventing them from learning Torah] . . . and he does not know and does not understand, he walks in darkness, and he has no part in the God of Israel, and he makes nonsense of the words of the living God.” In a panicky letter that he sent to Rabbi Tevele of Lissa, he reported that, in addition to his sermon, a proclamation against Wessely had been published in Frankfurt. Against their common enemy, in order to “avenge His covenant,” a covenant was formed between the rabbis of Poland and Germany.77 Wessely realized that in the cultural chasm that had opened in this public dispute, two contradictory narratives and opposing pictures of the future had been formed. He summed them up with picturesque words: “Those who speak ill of this epistle [Divrei shalom veemet] see a great mountain, the den of lions and tigers, and they strive to climb it and fight against it, and we see a fertile plain full of produce.”78 The reaction in Germany also contradicted the common opinion that the opponents of the plan laid out in Divrei shalom veemet were only Polish rabbis who had not yet been exposed to the new age. However, to Wessely’s consternation, a negative voice was also heard from Italy. The renowned Halakhic authority from Modena, Rabbi Ishmael Hacohen, devoted a long discussion to the work by “the philosopher and great rhetorician, the master, rabbi Naphtali Herz of Berlin,” stating that he was disappointed to find Wessely advancing “the Torah of mankind” and “the laws of God” until he “came to the conclusion that it was right for the esteemed rabbis of Poland, to challenge his words.” Not surprisingly, Wessely chose not to publish Rabbi Ishmael Hacohen response along with the other letters that he received from the rabbis of Italy.79

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Rabbi Judah Leib Margolioth also looked on the events of 1782 with concern. At exactly that time, he withdrew his support from early Haskalah and the advancement of science and philosophy, and, out of deep fear, he adopted an oppositional position. He only put his spiritual accounting in writing two decades later, but one cannot mistake the disconcerting meaning of that year. Mendelssohn’s “Introduction” flashed a warning light for him. Unlike Mendelssohn, who presented a picture of Judaism consistent with the value of religious tolerance and condemned coercion in faith and conduct, Margolioth believed that coercion was, in fact, one of the foundations of the religion. Whereas Mendelssohn rejected Dohm’s proposal to have the community continue to retain the possibility of punishing deviants from the path of religion, Margolioth sided with the author of On the Civil Improvement of the Jews. He stated that Mendelssohn’s opinion “that one must not punish someone who sinned because his heart was seduced by his reason to deny matters of belief and opinion” was dangerous; it encouraged heresy and religious permissiveness.80 The opposing trends traced by this biography of the Jewish eighteenth century at its beginning did not vanish in its later stages. Even in the 1780s, Kabbalistic ethical works, such as Qav hayashar by Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover and Shevet musar by Elijah Hacohen, continued to be among the most widely printed books in Hebrew and Yiddish, and seventy or eighty years after their first publication, their threats of punishment in Gehenna continued to reverberate. In an era when it appeared that belief in the supernatural was being subjected to the test of rational criticism and various processes of secularization were gaining impetus, religious leaders exerted great influence and were widely admired, books of Kabbalah were circulated in many editions, and, as we have seen, the Hasidic movement was growing stronger, which provoked renewal of the polemics of the Mitnagdim. Very surprisingly, Isaac Halevi Satanow, one of the most prolific Maskilim—he had arrived in Berlin from Galicia and had come to run the H.inukh Na’arim printing house of the German Maskilim—crossed the border in the opposite direction of the cultural emigration. He returned to Poland for a short time to publish books of Kabbalah. In 1782, he brought two manuscripts by Rabbi H.aim Vital, the disciple of Rabbi Luria (the ARI)—Ets h.ayim (Tree of Life) and Pri ‘ets h.ayim (Fruit of the Tree of Life)—to the printing house in Korzec that founded the Hasidic library.81 The rabbis and Kabbalists whose approbations he published praised his initiative: “In a time of grace the perfect rabbinic sage and grammarian, our master rabbi Isaac Halevi from the holy community of Satanow, caused to be printed the holy and awesome book named Pri ‘ets h.ayim by the ARI of sacred memory, which was proofread with the height of perfection.”82

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The publication of these works had the significance of a cultural turning no less than the works of the Maskilim. It appears that the Kabbalists, including the members of the Kloiz (a study house) in Brody, decided that the time had come to display the Torah of the ARI in a printed work, and the one who initiated this was, in fact, Satanow. In parallel with his efforts in Berlin to strengthen rationalist culture by means of investigation, with this project, he also contributed to the revival of Kabbalistic literature and the momentum of Hasidism, because books of its teachings were also published in Korzec. Until then, the Kabbalah of the ARI, as transmitted for generations by means of Vital, was esoteric and elitist, but now these fundamental texts from sixteenthcentury Safed, which were studied by a select few from manuscripts, were available to scholars. The religious mission proposed by these books was great and exhilarating. The mystical language gave religious life spiritual meaning beyond the study of Torah and keeping the commandments, and man was called upon to take an influential part in the dialogue between the upper and lower worlds. The service of God was not only the obedient observance of His commandments, but a means of repairing creation and intervention in the mysterious life of the heavenly host, as described in these words from the introduction to Pri ‘ets h.ayim: “This is the meaning of our intentions in our commandments and prayers, that thereby the sefirot [the system of ten emanations which symbolize the degrees of revelation] will be unified, and this reason is so that by worship in the heart, which is prayer, which is the secret of drawing abundance to the sefirot above, and this is so that man can be part of the exalted divine, gripped in the holy chain by chaining the enchaining of his soul from degree to degree.”83 From then on, evaluating the direction of history and identifying the challenges it presented to the Jews became a focus of the cultural dispute. The outlines of reform justified by criticism of existing practice, such as those of Wessely, encountered suspicion and were interpreted as injurious to the religion. Under the impression of the relatively rapid flow of events and the voices calling for change, both from within and from the outside, even someone like Mendelssohn, a philosopher of the Enlightenment, could interpret the shocks, disputes, and contradictions as a twisting and unpredictable historical process. In the introduction he wrote, Mendelssohn had thanked Providence for enabling him to stand at an exciting historical crossroads in a society that was moving toward a humanistic revolution led by philosophers and statemen, but somewhat later, disappointment assailed him. He even suspected that Joseph II’s true intention was to bring the Jews closer to Christianity. About two weeks after receiving Cranz’s searing insult in The Search for Light and Justice, he wrote

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to Hennings on June 25, 1782, that he did not believe in historical progress, but in movement characterized by deviations and retreats, which he called a crane walk.84 This pessimism about the ability of the human race to progress was also expressed when he began to write Jerusalem that summer. He wrote that anyone who examines history as it is will readily discover that Providence did not plan progress: “We see the human race in its totality slightly oscillate; it never took a few steps forward without soon afterwards, and with redoubled speed, sliding back to its previous position.” While the individual person is capable of advancing toward perfection in life, he argued, historical movement is like a pendulum. Seeing the storms surrounding Wessely and Posner, the doubt cast by Michaelis upon the Jews’ capacity for citizenship, and Cranz’s injurious defiance, it appeared to him that the “fortunate hour” heralded by Dohm, Lessing, and Joseph II was like a passing meteor: “Now and then a dot blazes up in the midst of the great mass, becomes a glittering star and traverses an orbit which now after a shorter, now after a longer period, brings it back again to its starting point, or not far from it.”85 Incidental evidence that arrived from the streets of London supported his opinion that one should observe what happened under the sun and not be blinded by doctrines of tolerance. Young German traveler Karl Philipp Moritz (1756–1793), the man who developed experimental psychology, was a member of Mendelssohn’s circle and became one of Maimon’s friends in Berlin. In the journal of his trip to England, he reported an incident that took place in a carriage in the spring of 1782. When the carriage stopped at Kensington, a Jew wished to board it, but there was no room, and he refused to ride clinging to the side of the carriage. Moritz’s fellow passengers said it was ridiculous for a Jew to be ashamed of riding that way, as he was “nothing but a Jew.” That prejudice and distaste for Jews, Moritz told his readers, “is far more prevalent here than with us [in Germany].”86 Shortly before that, in the “Introduction,” Mendelssohn also complained about the great difficulty in uprooting prejudices and about the opponents of the naturalization of the Jews, commenting in despair: “Reason and humanity raise their voice in vain, because prejudice has grown old and lost its sense of hearing.”87

Note s 1. Vilna Excommunication, Av 5541, in Mordecai Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem bashanim 5532–5575 (1772–1815) (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 103–104. On the dispute of the early 1780s see Shimon Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), 138–169.

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2. On the development of the Hasidic movement in the early 1780s, see Ada Rapaport-Albert, “Hatenua’ hah.asidit ah.arei shnat 1772: Retsef mivni utemura,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Socological Aspects of Hasidism, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 23–85; Immanuel Etkes, Leshem shamayim: h.asidim, mitnagdim, maskilim uma shebeineihem (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2017), 67–76; Dubnow, Toldot hah.asidut, 151–169. 3. Shlomo Lucker, “Haqdamat hasefer,” in Sefer magid devarav leya’aqov, (Korzec: Zvi Hirsch and Shmuel Segal, 1781). On the publication of this book, see Zeev Gries, Sefer, sofer vesipur bereshit hah.asidut (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1992), 56–59. 4. The proclamations and writs of excommunication are collected in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 101–121. The Vilna Gaon’s signature, dated Av 24, 5541, appears on the appeal from Vilna. The list of signatories is headed by the rabbi of the community, Shmuel Avigdor (ibid., 109). See Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 138–150. 5. Proclamation of excommunication by Rabbi Avraham Katzenellenbogen, Elul 2, 5541, in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 115–116. 6. Katzenellenbogen to Levi Yitsh.aq of Berdyczow (apparently from Tammuz 8, 5542), in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 123–131. 7. Lucker, “Hitnatslut,” in Sefer magid devarav leya’aqov. See Gries, Sefer, sofer vesipur bereshit hah.asidut, 47–66; Wilenski, “Biqoret ‘al sefer toldot ya’aqov yosef,” in The Joshua Starr Memorial Volume: Studies in History and Philology (New York: Conference on Jewish Relations, 1953), 183–189. 8. Ya’aqov Yosef Hacohen, Sefer tsafnat pa’aneah. (Korecz: Zvi Hirsch ben Arie Leib, 1782), fol. 16a. 9. Ya’aqov Yosef Hacohen, Sefer toldot ya’aqov yosef (Korecz: Zvi Hirsch ben Arie Leib, 1780), fol. 102b; Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 2, 108. See David Biale, “The Displacement of Desire in Eighteenth Century Hasidism,” in Eros and the Jews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 121–148. 10. Katzenellenbogen’s proclamation of excommunication at the fair of Zelwa in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 115. 11. See Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 12. ‘Imanuel H.ai Riqi, Ze sefer yosher levav (Amsterdam: Unknown, 1742), fol. 37b. See Arie Morgenstern, “H.ishuvei haqets shel hamequbal r’ imanuel h.ai riqi,” in Mistiqa umeshih.iut: mi’aliyat haram”h.al ‘ad hagaon mivilna (Jerusalem: Maor, 1999), 19–36. 13. Ya’aqov Yosef of Polonnoye, Sefer ben porat yosef (Korzec: Zvi Hirsch ben Arie Leib, 1781), fol. 100a–b. See an exhaustive and up-to-date summary on the dispute among historians about whether Hasidim was a messianic movement in Etkes, Leshem shamayim, 98–136.

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14. Friedrich Schiller, The Robbers (1781), Gutenberg.org, July 20, 2014, https:// www.gutenberg.org/files/6782/6782-h/6782-h.htm. No publisher or translator listed. Friedrich Schiller, Die Räuber (Tübingen: J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1805), Gutenberg,org, January 1, 2015, https://www.gutenberg .org/files/47804/47804-h/47804-h.htm. 15. See Hilde Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein: A Daughter of the Enlightenment, 1758– 1818 (New York: Berg, 1991). 16. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, A Life in Letters, ed. Cliff Eisen, trans. Stewart Spencer (London: Penguin, 2006), 398–403; and see Peter Gay, Mozart (London: Phoenix, 2000), 39–76; Piero Melograni, W.A. Mozart: A Biography, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 137–147. 17. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 157–158. 18. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses, vol. 1 (Brussels: J Rozez, 1869), August 8, 2013, https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons _dangereuses/Lettre_81. Michel Feher, ed., The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Zoone Books, 1997), 912–934. 19. Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., trans. F. Max Müller (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 686, xix, 604, 703, respectively. 20. See Isser Woloch, Eighteenth Century Europe, Tradition and Progress, 1715–1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 103–145; Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. L. G. Cochrance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 92–110; T. C Blanning, The Eighteenth Century: Europe 1688–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 151; Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 207–243; Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (Leipzig: by der Beygandschen Buchhandlung, 1774); Ben Russell, James Watt: Making the World Anew (London: Rektion Books, 2014), 143–169; August Ludwig Schlözer, “Revolutionen in der Diät von Europa seit 300 Jahren,” Briefwechsel, Achter Theil, Heft 44 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeksche Buchhandlung, 1781), 93–120; Robert Liberles, Jews Welcome Coffee (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012). 21. Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis, No. 13,” Common Sense and Other Writings (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005), 89–94. 22. See Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 167–200. 23. See Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2011), 37–38. 24. Isaac Euchel, Sefat emet (Königsberg: Unknown, 1782); Euchel, “Mikhtav leish briti . . . yoel bri”l,” in Euchel Toldot rabenu hah.kham moshe ben menah.em (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1788).

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25. On the Posner affair, see August Friedrich Cranz, Ueber den Missbrauch der geistlichen Macht oder der weltlichen Herrschaft in Glaubenssachen durch Beyspiele aus dem itzigen Jahrhundert ins Licht gesetzt (Berlin: Selbstverlage, 1781); Andreas Guzman, “‘Hatora omnam tova akh hi netuna biyedei ganavim uviryonim’: ‘al hayerivut bein maskilim levin rabanim besof hameah ha-18,” in “Hahistoria hagermanit yehudit sheyarashnu”: germanim tse’irim kotvim historia yehudit, ed. Henry Wasserman (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2004), 11–35. 26. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 653. 27. “Abermaliger Justiz Mord in der Schweiz, 1782,” A. L. Schlözer’s StatsAnzeigen, vol. 2, 7 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1782), 273–277. 28. Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz, ‘Amudei beit yehuda, fol. 2b; Yitsh.aq Satanow, ed., Sefer hakuzari (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1795). See also Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 254–293; Iris Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race during the Long Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 81–89, 124–128; Tal Kogman, Hamaskilim bamada’im (Jerusalem: The Magness Press, 2013), 81–85. 29. Manasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden, Aus dem Englischen übersetzt. Nebst einer Vorrede von Moses Mendelssohn, in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1983), 3–5. 30. Euchel, Toldot rabenu hah.akham moshe ben menah.em, 30–33. 31. Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1781), Vorerinnerung, 28; and see Margaret R. O’Leary, Forging Freedom: The Life of Cerf Berr Médelsheim (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2012), 150–159; Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), 449–461; Altmann, “Letters from Dohm to Mendelssohn,” Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee, vol. 1 (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1975), 39–62; Robert Liberles, “Dohm’s Treatise on the Jews, a Defence of the Enlightenment,” Leo Baeck Year Book 33 (1988): 29–42. 32. See Robert Liberles, “From Toleration to Verbesserung: German and English Debates on the Jews in the Eighteenth-Century,” Central European History 22, no. 1 (1989): 3–32. 33. Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, 109–129; and see David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 23–28. 34. Naphtali Herz Wessely, Sefer divrei shalom veemet, second letter (“Rav tuv livnei Yisrael,” 5542) (Warsaw: Zubelinski, 1886), 97; Josel Reichenau, “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 7 (1797): 68–74; Wilhelm Gronau, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm, Ein biographischer Versuch (Lemgo: Meyersche Hof-Buchhandlung, 1824), 87–89; Jonathan I. Israel, Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx: The Fight for

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a Secular World of Universal and Equal Rights (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021), 192–193. 35. Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, vol. 2, 31–77; and see Horst Möller, “Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden: Christian Wilhelm Dohm und seine Gegner,” in Bild und Selbstbild der Juden Berlins zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, ed. Marianne Awerbuch and Stefi Jersch Wenzel (Berlin: Coloquium Verlag, 1992), 59–79. 36. Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, vol. 1, 152–154. 37. See Blanning, Joseph II (London: Routledge, 1994), 56–91. 38. See Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648–1789 (London: Penguin, 1990), 219–224; Charles H. O’Brien, “Ideas of Religious Toleration at the Time of Joseph II: A Study of the Enlightenment among Catholics in Austria,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 59, no. 7 (1969): 1–80. 39. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, pars. 54, 57. On the visit of the Pope see Blanning, Joseph II, 97–98; Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 256–261; Jeremy Black, Eighteenth Century Europe, 1700–1789 (London: Macmillan, 1992), 188. 40. On Joseph II’s legislation regarding the Jews, see Michael Silber, “Josephinian Reforms,” in The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 831–834; Michael K. Silber, “The Making of Habsburg Jewry in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, 7: The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Carp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 763–797; Joseph Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II (Stuttgart: Bleicher Verlag, 1986), 378–474, 564–575. 41. See Ivo Cerman, “Familiants Laws,” in The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1, 493–494. 42. See Jacob Toury, “‘Moshavot yehudiot’ badiunim harishonim shel be’ayat hayehudim,” Hatsyonot 5 (1978): 12–14; Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II, 423–429. 43. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 56. 44. See Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 73–94; Dubin, “Between Toleration and ῾Equalities’: Jewish Statuts and Community in PreRevolutionary Europe,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 1 (2002): 219–234. 45. Elia Morpurgo to Mendelssohn (May 8, 1782) in Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 14, 285–286; and see Yitsh.aq Rivkind, “Eliahu morpurgo mesay’ao shel veizel bemilkhemet hahaskala leor te’udot h.adashot betseruf mavo vehe’arot,” Yad vashem lezekher avraham zalman freidus (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1929), 138–159.

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46. See Silber, “Josephinian Reforms,” 832. 47. Ezekiel Landau, Derushei hatslah. (Warsaw: Levin Epstein, 1901), sermon 39. 48. Isaak Alexander, Salomo und Joseph II (Wien: Kessinger, 1782); Arenhof (Natan Arnstein), Einige Familienscenen bey Erblickung des Patents über die Freiheiten welche die Juden in den kaiserlichen Staaten erhalten haben (Wien: Rudolph Gräffer, 1782). 49. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: Schocken, 1971), ch. 23. 50. Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840, 21–33; Jay Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), ch. 4; Silber, “The Making of Habsburg Jewry in the Long Eighteenth Century,” 789–792; David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 191–226; Ruderman, “Looking Backward and Forward: Rethinking Jewish Modernity in the Light of Early Modernity,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 7: The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Carp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1089–11099; see Shmuel Feiner, “The ῾Happy Time’ of Moses Mendelssohn and the Transformative Year 1782,” in Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, ed. Richard L. Cohen et al. (Pittsburg: Hebrew Union Press and University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 282–293. 51. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 56. 52. Wessely, Divrei shalom veemet (Berlin: Unknown, 1782), ch. 4. 53. Wessely, Rav tuv livnei Yisrael (Berlin: Unknown, 1782), fol. 30–31. 54. Ibid., fol. 31–34. 55. Wessely, Divrei shalom veemet, ch. 4. 56. Wessely, Rav tuv livnei Yisrael, fol. 3b. 57. Ibid., fol. 24–25. 58. Wessely to the leaders and lay leaders of  Trieste, Berlin (23 Iyar 5542 [1782]), kerem h.emed 1 (1833): 5–7. 59. Rabbi David Tevele Schiff to his brother, the dayan, Meir (20 Elul 5542 [1782]), published in Charles Duschinsky, The Rabbinate of the Great Synagogue, London, from 1756–1842 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), 177–178. 60. Wessely, Divrei shalom veemet, ch. 1. 61. Ibid., ch. 4. 62. Wessely, Rav tuv livnei yisrael, fol. 5b–6a. 63. See the extensive collection of documents in Ingrid Lohmann, ed., Naphtali Herz Wessely Worte des Friedens und der Wahrheit, Dokumente einer Kontroverse über Erziehung in der europäischen Spätaufklärung (Münster: Waxmann, 2014). 64. Rivkind, “Eliahu morporgo mesay’ao shel veizel bemilkhemet hahaskala leor te’udot h.adashot betseruf mavo vehe’arot,” 150–155.

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65. Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 19, 281–282; ibid., vol. 13, 68–71. 66. Manasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden, 1–2. 67. Ibid., 7. 68. Ibid., 24–25. 69. August Friedrich Cranz, Das Forschen nach Licht und Recht (Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1782). 70. Nah.al habesor, Königsberg 5543 (1783), signed on April 13, 1783. 71. Nah.al habesor, 11. 72. Letter from H.evrat dorshei leshon ‘ever lenaftali herts veizel, Tevet 21, 5543, in Nah.al habesor, 4–6: “For with the word of the seer you spoke, and with the singers of truth is your part! Today we bow to you, O wise man! You grasped friends, Maskilim who seek the truth, and they want Torah from you.” 73. Wessely to H.evrat dorshei leshon ‘ever, in Nah.al habesor, 5–6. 74. Wessely, Rav tuv livnei Yisrael, 47. 75. On the inauguration of the school in Prague, see Luisa H.echt, “H.inukh yehudi moderni: bein ra’yonot hahaskala leinteresim politim, toldot beit hasefer hayehudi-germani beprag 1782–1850,” in Hahaskala legavaneiha: ‘iyunim h.adashim betoldot hahaskala uvesifruta, ed. Shmuel Feiner and Yisrael Bartal (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2005), 91–118; Moses Wiener, Nachricht von dem Ursprunge und Fortgange der deutschen jüdischen Hauptschule zu Prag (Prague: Unknown, 1784), 32–34; Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden in den böhmischen Ländern, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1969), 53–54; Dirk Sadowski, Haskala und Lebenswelt: Herz Homberg und die jüdischen deutschen Schulen in Galizien, 1782–1806 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 106–107; Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 104. 76. Proclamation from Prossnitz, July 6, 1782, in Simh.a Assaf, Meqorot letoldot hah.inukh beyisrael, vol. 1, ed. Shmuel Glick (Jerusalem: JTS, 2002), 493–495. 77. Sermon by Horowitz, June 11, 1782, and the letter of Rabbi David Tevele of Lissa, June 18, 1782, in Israel Natan Heshel, “Da’atam shel gedolei hador bemilh.amtam neged hamaskil Naftali herz vizel,” Kovetz beit Israel veaaron 8 (1993): 148–151, 154–155. 78. Wessely, Rav tuv livnei yisrael, 46. 79. Ishmael Ben Avraham Hacohen, Zera’ emet, vol. 2 (Livorno: Unknown, 1796), sig. 107. See David Malkeil, “Yetsira vesuga besifrut hahalakha beitalia ba’et hah.adasha,” Pe’amim 86–87 (2001): 258–296 (esp. 264–265); Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste, 127. 80. Judah Leib Margalioth, Sefer ‘etsi ‘eden (Frankfurt on the Oder: Elssner, 1802), fol. 16b. 81. Sefer ‘ets h.ayim (Korzec: Zvi Hirsch and Shmuel Segal, 1782); Sefer pri ‘ets h.ayim (Korzec: Zvi Hirsch and Shmuel Segal, 1782). On Hebrew printing in

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Korzec, see Chaim Lieberman, Ohel Rah.”el, vol. 3 (New York: C. Lieberman, 1984), 35–59. See also Moshe Idel, “Perceptions of Kabbalah in the Second Half of the 18th Century,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991): 55–114; Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 353. 82. Page of approbations printed in both of the books, ‘Ets h.ayim and Pri ‘ets h.ayim. 83. Pri ‘ets h.ayim, author’s introduction. 84. Mendelssohn, Gesamelte Schriften, vol. 13, 64–66. 85. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 96–97. 86. See Karl Philipp Moritz, Reisen eines Deutschen in England in 1782 (Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1783), 110; Jerry White, London in the 18th Century, A Great and Monstrous Thing (London: Vintage Books, 2013), 151. 87. Menasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden, 10.

FOURTEEN

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THE EVE OF REVOLUTION “The Happiest Period” or “The Great Confusion”?

As the eighteenth century advanced through the 1780s, the feeling grew among both skeptics and enthusiasts that they were experiencing unprecedented turmoil. Pessimistic voices like Moses Mendelssohn’s reflected the greatness of their expectations and the tension between vast dreams and the apprehension of disappointment. In the tower of the Church of Saint Margaret in Gotha, the duchy of Saxony-Gotha-Altenburg, an exceptional document, which Tim Blanning called a time capsule, was placed as a memorial. It was important for its anonymous author—apparently in the spirit of the liberal Duke Ernst II (1745–1804), a patron of science and the arts and a member of the secret society of Illuminati—to emphasize that dramatic and noteworthy changes had taken place in his time: “The days we spent on this earth constituted the happiest period of the eighteenth century.” Just a few years before the most resounding rebellion against monarchy, he wrote that kings and princes were forgoing their authoritative and awe-inspiring status, showing contempt for ostentation, and seeking their people’s amity. Knowledge was spreading among every class, science made it possible to observe nature deeply, religion was appearing anew in its purity, and enlightenment was advancing. Religious tolerance and freedom of thought were replacing sectarian hostility and persecution. “Here you have a true portrayal of our age,” the anonymous writer said to the future reader. “Do not look down at us with arrogance, if you stand higher and see further than we did; rather appreciate from the picture we have given you just how much we elevated and supported your fatherland.”1 In similar spirit, and with pride, Joseph II had already presented his achievements in the fourth year of his rule as emperor in a “Pastoral Letter” (December

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13, 1783) sent to the officials of his government: “By means of the Enlightenment, I weakened the influence of old prejudices and of deeply rooted customs.” Henceforth nationality and religion would not be obstacles to unity among equals—useful citizens who would be brethren in a united kingdom.2 However, understanding of the situation was not uniform. From his viewpoint in Moravia, the chronicler, Trebitsch, found it difficult to comprehend the events of his time. Affected by the rapid pace of political upheavals, which were changing time-honored arrangements, he was shocked by the results. Joseph II’s legislation, which penetrated deeply into education and the law, led to erosion of religion, and “the revolt in France” was a severe crisis that led Europe to an era of “great confusion.”3

“Th e y Di d Not Sepa r ate One Nation from A noth er”: M a n v er sus th e Force s of Nat u r e European intellectuals, even those who did not ignore the mixture of light and shadow, competed among themselves, as it were, to formulate the appropriate title for the new age that was taking shape before their eyes. Johann Pezzl (1756–1823), for example, a radical writer in Austria, proclaimed it “the age of Joseph.” In his best-selling novel, Faustin or the Century of Philosophy (1783), he sent his protagonists to see whether the Enlightenment had changed society and to probe the gap between exalted values and their implementation on the ground. Fanaticism and superstition had not disappeared. In France, they refused to bury Voltaire. In America, they were cruel to the slaves, and true tolerance was not even to be found in England. In contrast to these failures, Vienna shone, for only there was philosophy seated on the royal throne. The year when Joseph II began his reign (1780), he said, was indeed the true beginning of the century of philosophy, and that year should be celebrated in following generations as the year of the victory of reason, humanity, and toleration.4 In 1784, the Berlinische Monatsschrift asked: What is Enlightenment? Immanuel Kant responded to the challenge, publishing a short article in which he christened the entire eighteenth century as the age of King Friedrich II. Although the Enlightenment had not yet achieved its goals, the human race was maturing toward the free use of reason (“Have courage to use your own reason!”). Bringing the compass up to date, Kant stated that the historical goal ought to be “release [man] from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity” is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.5 In another work from that optimistic year, Kant also painted a kind of cosmopolitan utopia, arguing that raising up mankind would lead to

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the implementation of the natural plan, the high point of which was the full civil unity of the human race.6 In his response to the question posed by the Berlinische Monatsschrift, Mendelssohn introduced several questions into the discussion. The Jewish philosopher found it difficult to wax enthusiastic about Friedrich, and, as if anticipating the bloody vicissitudes of the revolution, which he did not live to see, he warned that misuse of the Enlightenment vitiated the moral sense, giving rise to obstinacy, egotism, heresy, and anarchy.7 Faith in the powers of mankind and the spirit of optimism were nourished, among other things, by scientific innovation and progress. Indeed, Richard Holmes called it “the age of wonder.” The most visible achievement, which captivated the imagination of the masses, was the success of the lighter-thanair balloon, developed by the Montgolfier brothers. The flight through the air over Paris of the first balloon to carry two passengers (November 21, 1783) had symbolic significance for those who believed that mankind could control its destiny and make enormous changes. In France, flight was reported in the news with enthusiasm. No one was indifferent to the combination of scientific experiments with gases and the risk that the adventurers took when boarding the baskets under the balloons. The British Gentleman’s Magazine reported to its readers that the balloon was possibly the most impressive invention since the creation of the world. Benjamin Franklin, who was the ambassador of the United States in Paris, was one of the eyewitnesses who were enthralled by the flight of the first aeronauts. He reported to Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society in London, about one of the most successful experiments he had witnessed: on December 1, 1783, a manned balloon, filled with hydrogen, took off over the Jardin des Tuileries in a flight that lasted more than two hours. Newspapers prepared picture cards to be sold to the readers, hungry for stimulation, and on the day of the event, “all Paris was outdoors, in the area of the Tuileries, on docks and bridges, in fields, in the street, at their windows, or on the roofs of their houses. . . . Never was presence at a philosophical experience so impressive.” A cannon was fired to signal the ascent, and then, between the hours of one and two, all eyes stared from between the trees at the majestic sight, as the balloon gradually rose over the houses. When it reached the height of two hundred feet, the brave adventurers leaned out and waved white handkerchiefs from both sides of their basket to salute the spectators, who responded with thunderous applause and cheers. Jacques Alexandre Charles (1746–1823), who rode in the balloon, reported that nothing equaled the moment of total joy that filled his entire body during the ascent. He felt as if he were flying from the earth and from all its troubles forever. It was a kind of physical ecstasy. Being a scientist himself, Franklin stated that flight had been

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invented. From the moment that man could take to the air, all that was necessary were light and available vessels that could be steered. Now there was no limit to possibilities, from rapid means of transportation to military espionage and aerial observation; the meaning was no less than increasing man’s power versus matter.8 Robert Darnton called the powerful feelings that gripped the French people who were present at the experimental flights or read about them in the press an almost religious enthusiasm that spread beyond the scientific institutions of Paris. Aviation pioneers like Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754–1785) who was killed when he tried to cross the English Channel in a balloon on June 15, 1785, became popular heroes. Science seemed to have made men into gods. One poem in praise of the new invention expressed hope that now weak mortals could come close to the gods.9 The news from Paris reached Mendelssohn within a few days, and he was so impressed that he nearly forgot his reservations about the idea of progress for a moment. The pendulum of his mood swung in the direction of optimism once again. “The invention of the Montgolfier brothers will apparently lead to great revolutions,” he stated, in a manner very similar to Franklin, his contemporary. He, too, was dubious about the future, but at that time, he chose a brilliant vision rather than skepticism: Would these revolutions benefit society and humanity? It was too soon to decide. But who would hesitate to foster progress for that reason? The discovery of eternal truths was good in itself; divine providence would take care of directing them in the right direction.10 Just a few days passed after those words were written, the confidence of the people of the time in their ability to harness the forces of nature to improve life was put to a severe test. From various places in Western and Central Europe, starting in December 1783, worrisome news came about a harsh winter that would be extreme to an unpreceded degree. Distress increased. The freezing weather and constant snowfall reached disastrous proportions. An eyewitness in Dresden wrote in amazement: “God was revealed in such an astonishing way as the omnipotent ruler of nature,” so that “in comparison to Him, man is dust and ashes,” and once again we were forced to acknowledge our weakness.”11 The registers of the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam also reflect dread: In the winter of 5544, on Monday the sixth of Tevet [the end of December 1783], the frost increased very much, there is no memory like it eve among the old and grey-haired men. The snow is high outdoors, and there is no path for the feet. The rivers are frozen, and ships cannot pass through. The poor and indigent walk on the roads and place their feet on the highways, to

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bring bread from afar for the hunger of their houses, their paths are blocked, children ask for bread, and there is no one to give it to them. They have no covering in the cold, without a robe to cover their nakedness, without a blanket to spread and cover those who go under it.12

The news items, poems, dirges, sermons, and chronicles about the damage and distress caused by the winter, like none before it in London, Paris, Berlin, Heidelberg, Cologne, Prague, Amsterdam, and many other places, were not exaggerated. Eruption of the volcano, Laki, in Iceland on June 8, 1783, which lasted for eight consecutive months, set in motion a series of dramatic changes in the climate. Enormous quantities of lava poured out, and clouds of ash, soot, and gas filled the air. These drifted far off, covered the sky, and caused thick smog and fog. In extensive areas of Europe, a brutally hot summer was followed by a cold winter, during which the rivers froze. A slight warming at the end of February brought a thaw, rivers overflowed their banks, and destructive floods, bearing sharp plates of ice, struck houses and broke through walls. Food shortages, breathing difficulties, the destruction of crops, soaring prices, blocked roads, collapsed buildings, and many deaths aroused dread. A Parisian newspaper reported that, exceptionally, the churches were full of people praying to the saints.13 “At the end of Kislev, on Sunday morning, before noon, darkness came upon us, and fog, so that no one could recognize his fellow, and after that came frost, growing more severe every day,” Shlomo Zalman lamented in the margins of a Yiddish song that he wrote to preserve the memory of the dreadful winter, which had struck Amsterdam. It was to be sung to the melody of the prayer for the dead, El male rah.amim (God, full of mercy), and every verse ended, “Woe to us, for we have sinned.” The only ray of light for the poor, who suffered the most, was the assistance and charity provided both by Jews and by “the uncircumcised.”14 Rather extensive testimony has been preserved about the damage caused by the floods that struck the small communities of Mülheim, Bonn, and Deutz on the banks of the Rhine in February 1784. For example, Mendel Nathan of Mülheim underwent dreadful moments when the water and ice swept away everything in their path. He and his family managed to be saved after their house was destroyed by crawling through windows and onto roofs to find safety. The synagogue collapsed, leaving the community without a Torah scroll and daily and holiday prayer books.15 The pamphlet Sefer bekhi neharot (Story of Rivers of Weeping), written by Shimon Ya’aqov Avraham of Copenhagen, one of the three hundred Jewish residents of Bonn, reports a rare event: “In the year 5544 of the creation of the world, from the beginning of the year, the orders of creation changed, the Lord opened His storehouse and removed the weapons

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of fury, masses of snow and ice and frost, the likes of which had not been in our time.” The disaster began on Thursday, 4 Adar (February 26, 1784), when the ice, which had covered the Rhine for forty-seven days, cracked. Floodwaters and large chunks of ice destroyed bridges, smashed river barges to smithereens, and made buildings collapse. The noise was dreadful: “All the people of the city were enrobed in dread, the city was stricken, and thunder gripped them.” Shimon Copenhagen shared what he had undergone with his readers, who climbed up to high stories and tried to save themselves in boats. Along with a report that preserved the feelings and voices in Bonn and its surroundings during the outbreak of the forces of nature and the lament for the severe damage, he also used Story of Rivers of Weeping to preach morality and interpret the disaster as punishment from heaven and an event requiring repentance. The extreme deviation from the natural order shows that everything is in the hands of Providence. In his opinion, the severe winter was God’s response to criticism of religion and growing secularization. Because skepticism had increased and there were those who wished to “remove Providence” and say “what’s the point of serving God,” people had been tormented by the catastrophe. The moral was, he said, “Do not heed the words of the heretics and skeptics, who destroy the Oral Law.”16 As with earthquakes and the appearance of comets and meteors, both Jews and Christians accorded religious significance to exceptional natural phenomena, and, in consolation, they counseled giving thanks for the miracle and recognizing with awe the power of God. Jews in Germany, Moravia and Bohemia saw the hand of Providence intervening for them in nature, precisely at the time when they were pleading for a miracle from heaven. The distress of the winter brought people together, fostering solidarity and tolerance for the sharing of a common human fate. Shimon Cpenhagen knew very well that the adventures he had undergone until he was rescued were merely one instance among many, “in any event all the gazettes are full of this, and they write about this, what happened to them in other places and countries.” A Christian teacher who was an eyewitness to the disasters that struck the people living on the banks of the Rhine told how people of different religions joined in common prayer: “Here Christians and Jews sit together, Catholics and Protestants, suffering from the same dread, penetrated by the feeling of significance, and they pray in brotherhood to a single God, that He might save them.” The contributions in food, clothing, and blankets were distributed “without considering religion.”17 The municipal authorities and wealthy gentiles came to the assistance of the Jews of Amsterdam. An anonymous donor, “a gentile who concealed his

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name,” donated three thousand florins to the cause, “a group of gentile friends placed a chest in the room, and on it was written, ‘for the benefit of the poor Jewish poor.’”18 Story of Rivers of Weeping, which attacked sinners against the religion, went out of its way to express gratitude for the assistance given by Christians to the Jews of Bonn and Deutz. Highly placed ministers and army officers placed themselves in the Jewish streets to deter “hooligans” from plundering the empty houses. They positioned armed guards and supplied boats to rescue trapped people. The Jews of Deutz, whose houses were covered by the floodwaters, fled to the monastery: “they barricaded themselves in the cloister, that was built upon a high place, and they received them with joy, and they did not separate one nation from another.”19 It appeared that, beyond the governmental edicts, the programs of reform, and the writings of enlightened philosophers, in that moment, religious tolerance found true expression in human brotherhood in shared daily life. Natural catastrophes also gave rise to a new type of hero—one who gained fame by virtue of the practical application of humanistic values and recognition of equality among human beings beyond the boundaries of status. The most famous of these was the young Duke Maximilian Julius Leopold von Braunschweig (1752–1785), the commander of a unit of the Prussian army in the area of the city of Frankfurt on the Oder, and a member of the Freemasons. He did not hesitate to risk his life in assisting peasants who were trapped by the floods in the spring. A Hebrew source recounts: “The waters of the Oder River increased and became a flood of many waters, until the voice of the poor people who were about to die, who lived on the river, reached the heart of the duke.” Despite warnings of the danger, he boarded a boat, which capsized because of the powerful current. News of the duke’s drowning, on April 27, 1785, spread rapidly. His last words—“I am a man like yourselves, and here the rescue of human beings hangs in the balance”—were quoted in the newspapers and in poems, and they were inscribed on a monument to his memory. Along with Goethe, Schiller, and many others, Jews also took part in mourning him and fostering his memory. Rabbi Yosef Meir Teumim (1727–1792), the author of the commentary on the Shulh.an ‘arukh, Pri megadim, gave a sermon in the synagogue of Frankfurt on the Oder that was published in German in a special pamphlet. “My heart bleeds,” the rabbi lamented, praising the duke’s exceptional “love of mankind,” the height of which was his impressive self-sacrifice. A letter from a local Jewish merchant to a colleague in Königsberg, written a few days after the drowning, added testimony to his merciful attitude toward the Jews. The editors of Hameasef promptly published the letter in the edition for the month of Tamuz, accompanied by an elegy written by Naphtali Herz

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Wessely. Leopold’s act of compassion and heroism (“how quickly you went down to sail to the valley of death, because of the troubles of poor people, about to die”), was recorded for posterity as testimony to the huge and resounding victory of humanitarianism: “A minister and leader were you in the army of our king, a soldier of Friedrich the Great, the cynosure of our generation.” However, his heroism in rescuing simple, poor people was many times greater than that of military heroes, whose power was only in the sword. Like the mobilization for the assistance of the Jews who survived the floods, identification with Duke Leopold’s courageous humanitarian deed crossed the boundary between Christians and Jews, enabling both rabbis and Maskilim to present a non-Jewish aristocrat as an iconic hero.20

“L e st Th e y Interv ene in a Qua r r el a mong th e Squa bbling Inh a bita nts of th e State” Collapse of traditional beliefs, protest against privilege, loss of faith in the men in authority, antipathy toward the sanctity of the aristocracy, the Church, and the monarchy, and recognition for the urgency for reform were all, as recorded in the time capsule of Gotha, characteristic of the 1780s. In retrospect, Napoleon Bonaparte singled out 1785 as the beginning of the French Revolution, and anyone who had followed the news in Europe knew what he meant. During the tense years prior to the revolution, pressure mounted in France to find a solution to the problem of great national debts and also for reform. In November 1787, Louis XVI signed an edict of toleration for Calvinists, effecting a true change in his policy, which had been nonrecognition of Protestants and prohibition of their religious observance. The introduction to the edict states that “justice and the interest of our kingdom do not permit us to exclude any longer from the rights of civil status those of our subjects or resident foreigners in our empire who do not profess the Catholic religion.”21 The same climate of rethinking the traditional restrictions led to the revoking of the body tax that had been imposed on the Jews. Wessely, who, as we have seen, followed intensely the shifts in mood in Europe, identified a historical turning point: “When a law and immutable edict has been issued, to exempt the Jews from a very humiliating tax, which had been imposed on them in earlier generations, to pay a duty on their soul at the gate.” In a poem that he published in 1785, he blessed the end of a dark period, and praised Louis XVI, who, he believed, was introducing a policy of humane toleration: “Like the light of the sun to dispel darkness and fog. . . . Even for the seed of Jacob, you have found compassion. . . . And you are zealous for the image of God, and you say, they

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are human beings, their contempt is our contempt. I will remove this shame of theirs and do away with it.”22 The king of Prussia’s death and the ascent of his nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II, to the throne on August 17, 1786, gave rise to demonstrations of patriotism in the Jewish communities of Königsberg and Berlin. The issue of Hameasef for the month of Av was headed by the item, “For the time has changed our order. . . . Your mighty and wise and righteous king Friedrich II lies with his fathers.” In tacit agreement with Kant that the eighteenth century was the century of Friedrich, the article ignored restrictive legislation, suspicion, and close supervision. Various eulogists emphasized the connection between the rule of the Prussian king and favorable changes in the lives of the Jews. A historical turning point had been reached when “his hands raised you from the dung heap, in his days you were not driven from acceptance in the estate of man as one of his nation.” The growth of Jewish enlightenment—primarily the appearance of Mendelssohn—was only possible in “the land of Friedrich, the lover of wisdom and supporter of truth in every heart where he found it.” For the self-image of the Jewish elite in Berlin, the forty-six years of Friedrich II’s rule both improved the stratus of the community and made it into a guide, representing a vision of the future and cultural revival.23 Efforts at reform persisted constantly. With the purpose of correcting thoroughly the flaws brought by Poland’s political weakness, the Great Sejm began to meet in Warsaw starting in the autumn of 1788. Magnates from such leading families as the Potockis and Radziwiłłs organized as patriots who opposed King Stanisław Poniatowski’s policy of cooperation with Russia and wished to rehabilitate the country, to defend the peasants, to abolish the traditional privileges and orders of government, and even to settle the status of the Jews. In the end, the king supported these efforts, and what was called a soft revolution took place. At the beginning of 1789, the Sejm already decided to impose an unprecedented tax on the nobility and the Church, and in September, a committee was formed to draft the constitution of the Polish Republic. Success was achieved in the fourth year of the Sejm’s activity.24 Meanwhile, further edicts of toleration were promulgated from the court of Joseph II, defining the rights and duties of the Jews in various regions of the empire. Hameasef, the publication of the Maskilim in Königsberg, urged the hesitant to cooperate with the new measures with another poem by Wessely: “Be strong and become men, remove gloom from your heart. . . . Lend a hand to the security of the kingdom, the security of its subjects, speak in the language of my people, understand the moral lesson, teach your children and establish schools, strengthen the kingdom, love those who love it.”25 The treaty

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with Russia involved Austria in a difficult war against Turkey beginning in 1788, and the spokesmen for the Jewish minority looked on with concern and displayed loyalty. For example, the Jews in Vienna and elsewhere took part in the celebrations of the victory in Serbia at the end of 1789 and published poems of praise. In ceremonies in their synagogue, the Jews of Mantua recited poems in Hebrew and Italian, praising the “fame and courage and marvels that God did for our lord the king, the emperor Giuseppe Secondo.” They condemned “the house of Turkey, full of deceit, arousing fury for war,” and they praised the Russian ally, “Katherine the mother of wisdom.” Rabbi Ezekiel Landau gave a special sermon in the Maisel synagogue in Prague, telling his Jewish listeners: “The great successes garnered by the commanders of the army of his highness the emperor in these times in several places are not a matter of chance, but of the marvelous Providence of the Creator, blessed be He, and by His will.” Joseph II was king by the grace of God, and therefore “our lord the emperor is righteous in this war, everything according to law and integrity, and there is no oppression here at all.”26 Dependance on God as the universal, merciful legislator and as the source of humanistic morality was also one of the central arguments in the opposition to Black slavery and the demand for a reform that would lead to its absolute abolition. Olaudah Equiano addressed English public opinion in an article that appeared in early January 1788 in a London newspaper, asking whether anyone could be less savage than a tiger or a wolf in trying to justify the cruelty toward Blacks in the West Indies. Equiano, who was also called Gustavus Vassa, was kidnapped by slave traders in Africa when he was a child of eleven, and he underwent the trials of the Atlantic crossing, torture, hunger, beatings, and harsh servitude on plantations in America before he managed to purchase his freedom. Beginning in the 1780s, he became the personal voice of the other in his own eyes and those of his surroundings; he was an African who became a British Methodist and was among the strongest of those crying out against the injustice committed against Blacks. Equiano appealed to the Christian conscience, saying they were all the children of the same Parent, and he frequently quoted the Bible to prove that racial discrimination was sinful. His model was Moses, the ancient sage who encouraged unity between the Israelites and outsiders when he married an Ethiopian woman (Num. 12:1) and established an eternal precedent for similar intermarriage. Confirmation came from God himself when He punished Miriam and Aaron for speaking ill of their brother. In his autobiography, published in 1789, he described the plight of the slaves as the purest expression of the horrible cruelty of man to his fellow man. The thousands who read his book were certainly surprised to discover that Blacks

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were not savages, nor were they inferior to them. Indeed, according to Equiano, they practiced circumcision in Africa, like the Jews, and at the same time they offered sacrifices and celebrated festivals in a similar way.27 His personal story added weight to the efforts of the opponents of slavery in America and England during the years after the Zong affair. Penetrated by religious and humanistic motives and supported by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in 1787, young politician William Wilberforce (1759–1833) began a long political campaign in Parliament to pass a law forbidding the slave trade. John Newton, who had been the captain of a slave ship, provided a hair-raising description of the way women fell victim to the coarseness and concupiscence of white savages. In November 1789, in Philadelphia, Franklin, as the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, signed a petition, central to which was the statement: “From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the Portion, It is still the Birthright of all men, & influenced by the strong ties of Humanity & the Principles of their Institution, your Memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavours to loosen the bounds of Slavery and promote a general Enjoyment of the blessings of Freedom.”28 The winds blowing in the young state across the ocean influenced the seekers of liberty and reform in Europe. Mendelssohn’s apprehension about “the Congress in America striking up the old tune and speaking of a dominant religion” was dispelled when, only nineteen days before his death, a law on religious liberty drafted by Thomas Jefferson was passed in Virginia on December 16, 1785. It was based on the principle that the omnipotent God created freedom of thought, which must not be infringed on by any authority or punishment by the state, and religious worship must not be restricted, nor should there be intervention in beliefs and opinions. In 1787, the American Constitution stated, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”29 In the same year, tension peaked in the Dutch Republic between the patriots who were inspired by the Enlightenment and events in America and demanded democratic reform and civic equality and supporters of the government of the stadtholder, Willem V of Orange-Nassau (1748–1806), who was forced to leave his palace in The Hague and seek refuge in Nijmegen. In the documents of the Ashkenazi community, 1787 was flagged as the decisive year in the struggle between rebellion and restoration: “After that the stadtholder Willem V fled from the throne of his government because of the fierce rebellion against him, until His supporters got the upper hand, and he sat on his throne.” Street battles broke out between the sides in the spring, and the old order was restored

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only after the intervention of the Prussian army, upon the initiative of the stadtholder’s wife, Princess Wilhelmine von Preussen (1751–1820), Friedrich Wilhelm II’s sister. In this revolutionary climate, neither the Ashkenazim nor the Sephardim of Amsterdam remained indifferent. Almost all the Jews opposed the patriots, whose party took over the administration and security of the city, and some of them even took to the streets, donning the orange symbol of the sympathizers and joining in the conflict. Armed partisans of the patriots passed through the streets in Jewish neighborhoods, provoking great fear that the synagogues would be looted. The lay leaders of the Ashkenazi community, who sought to preserve their establishment version of the events, maintained intense negotiations with the rivals. They restrained Jews who wanted action (“the motley crew among us”) and did everything they could to remain neutral. Proclamations implored the Jews “to guard their mouths and tongues, lest they intervene in the quarrel among the squabbling inhabitants of the state, not to praise the stadtholder [Prince Willem] and not to accuse his enemies.” Open identification with the House of Orange, one of them states, “is not at all suitable to the Jews, and even less so to be present in any form at all in any fistfight or crowd, and we have heard that headstrong people have volunteered to fight against non-Jews, which, for our many sins, causes a great desecration of the Name. Therefore, with great and enormous admonition, let it be said that no one shall dare to be seen in any crowd or fistfight.”30 Although everyone knew how strongly the Jewish community opposed the patriots, an incident in which those with the opposite political view protested the sweeping support for the prince’s regime truly revealed it. On one day of rioting, August 29, 1787, the lay leaders were summoned to the office of the chief of police, to be reprimanded: “He said to them in fury, a bad rumor has come to us. I heard that you hold prayers in your synagogue for the success of the prince [Willem V], and there are some Jews who refrain for that reason from going to your synagogue, for their spirits blazed in them upon hearing about it. I never thought of such a thing about you. Your whole thrust has to be for the good of the state, and not the opposite, and therefore I command you, with a warning, not to hold such a prayer.” Upset because the dilemma of “the good of the state” had been laid at their door, the lay leaders replied that they still maintained neutrality, as the tradition required, and they also promised to send a translation into Dutch and French to prove it. From the point of view of the lay leaders, the cautious policy, which restrained the youth, who wanted to take part in the confrontations, ultimately proved to be justified. After the revolt of the patriots failed, and the prince was restored to his throne by Prussian bayonets, three representatives of the lay leaders—Leib Minden, Gumpl

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Wolfenbüttel, and Benjamin Cohen—reported to the palace in The Hague on October 23, 1787. “They were immediately brought to the chamber where the lord [the prince] sits, in the pure company of ‘Die Kronprinzessin von Preussen’ [Princess Wilhelmina], sitting on the right of his highness. Upon their entry into that chamber, they rose from their seats . . . and received our comrades cordially.” Benjamin Cohen, a banker and tobacco merchant, and his brother had already proven their loyalty to the House of Orange. He congratulated the prince on the end of the crisis and “the restoration of your royal highness to your high positions,” and Prince Willem V, who was grateful to them for not joining with his enemies, “promised to stand by the Jews at all times and occasions.”31 The political conflict in the Dutch arena led to a severe rift in Jewish society. In the following decade, those who sympathized with the principles of liberty and revolution were to organize in a consolidated and significant group, which would also offer an alternative to the conservative establishment in the guise of “the new community.” Meanwhile, for the Jews of Holland, who encountered an uprising against the government on their thresholds, this was an early lesson in modern politics in the age of revolutions.

H a r a ssed, Serva nt, L e a r ned, a n d Cu lt u r ed Wom en: Bet w e en E xclusion a n d Pow er Women in all social classes throughout Europe began to reevaluate their connection to issues of citizenship, as demonstrated by Margaret Hunt in describing the involvement of women in reformist and revolutionary politics: “All over Europe, women of all social backgrounds—market-women like [Katherine] Mulder [who was arrested for leading protest riots of the Orangists in Rotterdam], middle-class intellectuals like [Bettie] Wolff, and noblewomen like the Poles [Izabela Czartoryska, of the patriotic wing of the supporters of reform] and Wilhelmina of Prussia—were beginning to reassess their relationship to citizenship.”32 As we have seen, Jewish women were excluded from the public arena of community leadership and from cultural cultivation. Women had no place at all in modern movements such as Hasidism. The sources that nevertheless give an indirect, limited, and restricted voice to women particularly emphasize their sexual identity, which endangers men, as if the bedroom were the principal arena of the events of their lives. For example, in the rabbinical court of Frankfurt, Jetche, Avraham Fulda’s wife, complained “that it is impossible to live with him [her husband], because of the repulsive things he has on his body.”

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The dayanim (rabbinical judges) ruled that she could not be forced to sleep with him, but nor could they accept her demand that he continue to support her, because her decision not to dwell with him “in the way of a wife with her husband” makes her a “rebellious woman,” with no rights. Even when severe complaints reached them about the cantor, Shaul Ben Shalom, who had come from Poland to assume the coveted post in Frankfurt, they found it hard to stop him. For about a decade, the cantor had harassed women and even impregnated a maidservant (“they heard from the prostitute of whom it is explicitly said that she became pregnant from him”), despite the restrictions they imposed on him and the denial of his right to lead prayers on the High Holy Days. He was not, however, dismissed from his post. He was required “to distance himself utterly from connections with women, both married and unmarried . . . and even more so was he forbidden to go see the dances and gambols of maidens.” Only after evidence was produced showing that Shalom, who was married and a father, ignored those restrictions—and another maidservant complained against him—was he deported back to Poland.33 In the books of Halakhic questions and responsa from the 1780s, collected in the Even ha’ezer section of Noda’ beyehuda by Rabbi Landau, one hears the voices of women who, willingly or through coercion, became transgressors. An anonymous woman confessed that she was raped in an inn: “In the middle of the night the young man came quietly and grasped her to lie with her, and she closed her thighs tightly to resist him, but nevertheless he did not turn from his evil.” Thereby she exposed herself to the claim that she had “whored willingly.” Another woman admitted that she had sinned and also that she had not immersed herself in the ritual bath before having relations with her husband. A Jewish woman from Alsace became pregnant from relations with her fiancé before they were married. A couple from Prague admitted that for a long time they had had a love affair (“a man was connected in a love-connection with a maiden for several years, and now the matter is known, that she whored and became pregnant from her whoredom”), and now they wished to marry. The stories of abandoned wives were particularly sad. One question came from Praga from a woman who claimed that her husband died in the winter of 1783 in the Vistula river, when the ice broke beneath him, though this was difficult to corroborate. Similarly, it was hard to confirm the testimony of the wife of Feivel Ben Moshe of Kolín, who traveled from Bohemia to France, arrived in Paris, and from there went to Spain, where he was arrested and executed for robbery. Most injurious of all invasions of female intimacy was the investigation “of the miserable, soft, and delicate woman, from the greatest and highest lineage, who was trapped in the bonds of abandonment for many years.” She was just a

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little girl when she was married to a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy, who then disappeared, and this precocious marriage became a trap for her. She argued over and over to the rabbis that she was still a virgin, so there was no obstacle to her being free to marry another man. They never had sexual relations, she argued, and when they did try to do so, to placate the family and society, they failed: “This woman says that her husband never approached her at all, because she did not let him, only once, because of the shame, because people mocked her, that there had been no sign of her virginity, then she accommodated him, and he lay on her, and he barely touched her in that place, it happened that the people in the house knocked on the door of the room, and the couple were lying there, and for fear of the knocking, he separated from her, and this was before he was thirteen years old.” She testified that she told this to her mother, who examined the sheet and presented it to the rabbi, “and the rabbi did not find any sign of blood on the sheet, only the sight of seed and saliva.” The girl’s life and body were placed on display. The investigators were not satisfied with this and continued their invasion, asking: “Maybe he lay with her ‘not in the right way [anally].’ She answered that from that time afterward he did not lie on her, not frontally and not from behind.” However, her answers were not satisfactory, and they found no Halakhic way to rely on her testimony, remove her from the category of a married woman, and free her from her status as an abandoned wife.34 A document from the small German village of Steinbiedersdorf, near the French region of Lorraine, displays the hopes, despair, and disappointment of Jewish maidservants. In December 1784, Madl sued Meuschel Levi to honor his promise to marry her. He seduced her, she testified, and within eight days, he slept with her four times, and she became pregnant. After the man denied it, Madl changed her story and accused Gembel, the son of Jacob Meyer Cahn, the owner of the house where she worked. She admitted that they convinced her, for money, to lay the blame on someone else, but this time, as well, the man was acquitted. Soon afterward, another pregnant maidservant, sixteenyear-old Gelle, demanded that he marry her as promised. She was working in a tavern where a wedding took place, she claimed, when he seduced her. With the help of his wealthy father, her request was rejected. For Gembel, commented Claudia Ulbrich, who investigated these cases, “it was a matter of honor to seduce the maids, as they were objects he claimed for himself,” whereas the girls hoped for marriage. In the end, these vulnerable women, who were seduced, did not enjoy sympathy from their community, and they were punished more severely than the men for transgressing the boundaries of sexual morality.35

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Fromet, a fifteen-year-old orphan servant, was hounded by another woman. The widow Sheinele Mas, who lived at 143 in the Jews’ street in the Frankfurt Ghetto, tormented a girl who had come from a village, accused her of theft, and even kicked her angrily in the rear end. In December 1782, Fromet picked up an axe and murdered Sheinele. She fled in fear but was captured and immediately placed on trial. Legal opinions solicited from the universities of Göttingen and Erlangen found no redeeming point that could alter the death sentence that was decreed against her. The defense attorney asked to commute the sentence to twelve years imprisonment, since the defendant was a mere girl who did suffer from injurious treatment, and urged that it be taken into consideration that village Jews like her had no education or culture and were more like animals than human beings. His appeal, as well as the requests of community leaders, fell on deaf ears. Her prison guards reported that she was gripped by horrible dread of death, prayed, and pleaded that if God did not take her first, the authorities would quickly release her from her fear. On Sunday, November 4, 1783, the gates of the ghetto were sealed to prevent the Jews from going out to witness the execution. Fromet asked not to have her eyes covered, and, with childish innocence and acceptance of her fate, she said to the spectators, with a weak voice, before the sword was swung to take off her head, “Good night everyone!”36 Esther Abrahams (1771–1846), who was only fifteen when she stood trial in Old Bailey in London (August 30, 1786), escaped a death sentence and lived a long life. She was a servant in a hat shop when she was caught by a salesgirl for stealing black lace ribbons, worth about fifty shillings, from another shop. Like the servant women from Steinbiedersdorf, Esther was also unmarried and pregnant. She gave birth to her daughter, Rosanna, in the Newgate prison after her trial, two months before she was placed on a ship to Australia to serve a seven-year sentence in the prison colony. This was the First Fleet to the new continent, whose passengers, some of them in uniform and others in chains, established the British colony there. About 750 convicts landed at the bay near Sydney in January 1788. One hundred eighty of them were women, and fourteen were Jews. Along with Abrahams, other Jewish women who had been convicted of stealing or buying stolen property arrived. These included Amalia Levi, nineteen years old, who had been arrested for theft of a silk handkerchief from a store, and Flora Sara, who persuaded a woman to place money with her so that she could double it by magic. George Johnston (1764–1823), a Scottish junior officer in the British fleet who had fought in America, fell in love with Esther on the ship. He took Esther and her child under his wing, and in Sydney, he became her partner (they married after living together for more than twenty years) and the father of her children. The family thrived and acquired wealth and property;

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Johnston was even the governor of New South Wales for a short time, and Esther was the First Lady of the colony. Far from any Jewish community, and in the throes of the emigration and resettlement, nothing remained of her Jewish identity. Her children—except, probably, Rosanna—were baptized, and most likely, at a certain stage, she joined them. Abrahams rose from the lowest of the London streets—a Jewish criminal confined in Newgate, a young, unmarried mother—and found an opportunity, in banishment to Australia, to rise to the founding and leading circle of the colony in a new world.37 A pamphlet of only eight pages, published in Lwow in the late 1780s, preserves the isolated and desperate voice of protest, hanging in the air unanswered, of a woman who, for a moment, penetrated the fortress of rabbinical culture. A few copies are extant of Teh.inat imahot (Mothers’ Supplication), written by “the famous learned woman” Leah Horowitz. A few traces of her are preserved in the memoirs of Dov Ber Birkenthal, enabling us to appreciate the abilities of the daughter of a rabbinical family who acquired mastery of Torah sources on her own. On the face of it, she merely contributed to the familiar genre of religious literature for women with another personal prayer in Yiddish, but the three pages of the Hebrew introduction to this supplication read like a protest against the traditional status of women. The lines “rabbinical woman, mistress Sara Rivka Rah.el the daughter of the eminent and famous master and rabbi, Rabbi Jokel Horowitz, the head of the rabbinical court of the holy community of Glogau,” a contemporary of Mendelssohn, the Vilna Gaon, and Rabbi Landau, show that she was capable of writing in Aramaic and of quoting from the Zohar, the Shulh.an arukh, and Maimonides’s Sefer hamitsvot. Her criticism did not go beyond religious morality, and its purpose was to bolster fear of heaven— for example, women must not talk about secular matters in the synagogue on Sabbath—but it did convey the demand for empowering women’s spiritual and religious life. Horowitz emphasized that women’s prayer could contribute to the effort to bring redemption, and, in contrast to what appeared to be the marginality of women, she pointed to their obligation to perform many commandments, and not only to enable men to study Torah. Out of religious commitment and spiritual strength, women could supervise men’s behavior in the home and even gain supremacy, “for if the husband wants to stop studying Torah or to prevent his sons, then it will be a blessing for her if she overcomes him.” She was an exceptionally learned woman, as Moshe Rosman argues; in the eyes of the establishment, she was seen as an impressive curiosity in herself, but her subversive opinions went unheeded. Nevertheless, although she did not defy the social and cultural dominance of the men, and her protest

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had no influence, her public demand for recognition of women’s spirituality was significant in that age of revolutions, the 1780s. Horowitz questioned the masculine-rabbinical establishment and tried to make them reconsider the role of women in the Jewish religion.38 A different sort of Jewish women, two generations younger than Horowitz, foreign to Jewish religious literature and religious belief, and raised in the wealthy households of the Berlin community, were permeated by intellectual curiosity and the thirst for knowledge no less than the men of their times in the German elite. The world of Lwow and Teh.inat imahot was separated from the high society and its taste in literature and the arts in the capital of Prussia not only by Yiddish and Hebrew (in the former) and German and French (in the latter), but mainly by their values and aspirations. Brendel-Dorothea Mendelssohn, Henriette Herz, Sara Levi (née Itzig, 1761–1854), Rahel Levin (Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, 1771–1833), and others were educated in homes where European culture was imparted along with preservation of the Jewish religion. Some of them were married to Jewish men in arranged marriages. As they matured, they chose not to live in two parallel worlds any longer, and they found empowerment as women in the society of authors, poets, musicians, thinkers, government officials, and scientists, whom they had contact with in reading circles, salons, and correspondence. They admired Goethe, were inspired by Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1766–1834), and were close friends with brothers Wilhelm and Alexander Humboldt. The theater, literature, and music of their time filled their lives, and they satisfied their yearning for happiness with intimate friendships and the cultivation of virtue. Talented musician Sara Levi and her husband, Samuel, represented a combination of Enlightenment values and deep acculturation with concern for the project of Jewish modernization. They entertained a musical salon in their home, subsidized indigent Maskilim like Solomon Maimon, and supported the Freischule. Sara Levi was also one of the few women who subscribed to the books published in the framework of the Haskalah Library. However, the temptation to cross the lines was great, and several of these women chose Christianity. With the decisive step of severing themselves from Judaism, they gave radical expression to women’s autonomy and revolt against a tradition in which they found no meaning. Herz, who converted to Protestantism, attributed the indifference to the Jewish religion of young men and women in the last decades of the century to the shallowness of Jewish education: “Those who were still raised according to the old system, relegated the oppressive observance of Jewish customs to the sidelines . . . as soon as they became their own masters.” Nothing now filled the emotional space into which her generation was born,

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Herz complained in her memoirs. “Their parents didn’t want to teach them things they no longer believed, and so they were and are educated with no faith,” until she, by good fortune, and several of her friends finally found God in Christianity.39 Henriette de Lemos’s marriage at the age of fifteen to an older man, Marcus Herz (1747–1803), a philosopher and physician, actually gave her a great deal of freedom. In the 1780s, her home became a center of Berlin high society. Wellconnected guests came to listen to the lectures on philosophy and science by the Jewish scholar, a student of Kant’s, and to observe experiments in physics, while a circle of lovers of literature gathered around Henriette. Surrounded by servants, childless, and free of all worries, she continued to read and study with diligence, to enjoy admirers who were attracted by her beauty and her conversation, and to foster friendships with women and men. Artists painted her portrait, and around 1785, sculptor Gottfried Schadow made a bust of her, presenting her as a model figure from the classical world. In the story of her life, she discussed the development of various social circles and documented the transition from Mendelssohn’s generation to her own and that of her close friend Brendel Mendelssohn, who, to her regret, had been unhappily married at the age of eighteen to Simon Veit.40 Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), who later became a Prussian statesman, admired Henriette and poured his heart out to her in love letters, some in the Hebrew alphabet, which he had learned from her. He was only nineteen when he revealed his moments of melancholy and joy to the older married woman, telling about his desires, dreams, and pain. For them, intimate friendship, misgivings, and emotional upheavals superseded ethnic attachment and religious identity. In 1787, the two of them founded the Association for Virtue (Tugendbund) to strengthen the ties among the members and to strive for ethical perfection. “The goal of our association is to become happy by means of love,” Wilhelm wrote to Henriette, and, with those words, he formulated the romantic motto of liberty of this exclusive Berlin circle.41 Some of the tension between the generations in Berlin came to light in the autumn of 1788, when two young women from the new elite sneaked out in secret to a church in a small village and were baptized. For Sara Meyer, the girl who was rebuked for reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, this was the first step toward independence. Like Herz, she was married off at the age of fifteen. Unlike her, however, she disliked her husband, Lippmann Wolff, who was forced upon her in an arranged marriage. At the age of twenty-five, shortly after the death of her husband, she took the eighteen-year-old Mariana von Eybenberg (1770–1812) along with her to sever herself from the Jewish world. Among the salons, this was earthshaking news, but, as Alexander von Humboldt reported,

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rumor had it that within only two months, both women had returned to Judaism. He also reported that the secret conversion immediately became a subject in which the government and the Church intervened. The king himself wished to know how such a hasty conversion had been possible. Later, Meyer stated that the pressure exerted on her by her alarmed and angry family was too much to bear. The rebellious daughters of Aaron and Raisel Meyer, granddaughters of Veitel Heine Ephraim, one of the pillars of the community, were called to order. They were accused of no less than murdering their father and mother, Meyer reported, and in the end, the pressure “on the emotions of a weak woman, to incite her to take a step of weakness,” was successful. Soon after her marriage to the Baron von Grotthuss (1747–1801) a decade later, Meyer addressed a letter to the king of Prussia stating that she had been forced to sign a document, asking to return to Judaism, and asserting that she “had not observed the ceremonies of the Jewish religion afterward, and had never publicly repudiated her Christian faith.” Ultimately, her parents’ opposition to her conversion had no influence. As Jacob Katz pointed out, one of the outstanding features of communities like those of Berlin and Vienna in the 1780s was the weakening of family control over their children’s decisions, and the desperate efforts of certain families to impose parental authority were in vain.42 Crossing the boundaries of religion was painful. Seven years after the conversion of Joseph Arnstein and his daughter from his first marriage to a Jewish woman, he still felt the pain of separation from his parents. Though he bore an Austrian title of nobility, owned an estate, and was now married to an aristocratic baroness, in an emotional letter of 1785, soon after the death of his father, Adam Arnstein (1721–1785), one of the heads of the Jewish community, he pleaded with his family to stop boycotting him and to renew the connection: “Is it possible that you should hate your son so much?” Now, especially, when the spirit of tolerance influences us all, inspired by the emperor, and differences in religious faith no longer have such great importance? How can you ignore me and your innocent granddaughter forever? For we are all human beings and liable to be separated forever before we are reconciled. Won’t you please at least allow me to visit, to kiss your hands, and to receive your blessing?43 In the background, a legal struggle was still reverberating in and beyond Berlin. Two sisters, Rivka and Bleimchen, sought to revoke paragraph eighteen of their father’s will. Moses Isaack, one of Friedrich II’s wealthy “coinage Jews,” died in 1776, leaving a great deal of property and enormous wealth. He established a trust valued at a quarter of a million thalers to be divided within twelve years among his five children, on condition that they may not abandon the Jewish religion. Rivka and Bleimchen ignored this, converted, and married

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Christians. Now they argued that the restriction was unreasonable, contradictory to morality, and injurious to Christianity. To their great disappointment, Friedrich Wilhelm II determined that the state must defend the authority of wills, even if henceforth it would be forbidden for Jews to include such a restriction in them. Under pressure from public opinion, the converts’ brothers agreed voluntarily to grant them a considerable sum from the Isaack trust, a compromise authorized by the king.44 Mendelssohn, who followed this lawsuit during the last years of his life, was content with the sisters’ failure to challenge the will, which had been drawn up according to Halakha, but he was also apprehensive about deepening the involvement of the state in the life of the Jewish family. He was particularly offended by news about an event that had apparently taken place recently in Vienna, when a man converted to Christianity, while his wife remained Jewish, and he demanded that she not sever the bonds of matrimony. He hoped that Joseph II’s argument in the name of religious tolerance—that “difference in opinion in churchly matters cannot stand in the way of social ties”—would not be accepted. In a long footnote in his book, Jerusalem, Mendelssohn warned about the new situation, in which “the system of liberty [might] be misused to inflict oppression and violence.” If a man or a woman converted, they were violating the contract between them: “Since both partners still professed the Jewish religion, at least outwardly, when they entered into the contract, it is obvious that they had no other intention but to conduct their household according to Jewish rules of life and to educate their children according to Jewish principle.” To force the woman to remain married to her converted husband would obviously be a case of pleading freedom of conscience in defense of the most preposterous coercion of conscience. Mendelssohn saw only the beginning of these tensions and personal crises, which later even brought some of his children to abandon Judaism, but he did manage to leave behind testimony to his growing concern about the unsettling of the family. The modern challenge aroused a penetrating question in the mind of the Jewish philosopher, which was to reverberate for generations: “Must the wife submit to coercion of conscience because the husband wants to have liberty of conscience?”45

“H av e Th e y A lr e a dy Begu n to Gr a ze in th e Ga r dens of W isdom?”: Fou r Jou r ne ys Mendelssohn’s apprehension that the principles of personal freedom might be misused and become injurious could have been confirmed in the life of Maimon during the 1780s. Though he did not convert, his belief in freedom of

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conscience sealed the fate of his wife and son. After a sojourn in Berlin in the bosom of Maskilic society, this Lithuanian cultural immigrant resumed his wanderings in 1783. Bearing letters of recommendation from Mendelssohn and other friends, he made his way to Hamburg. The changes he chose to make in seeking a path in life became more radical than in the past, and he left behind a series of burnt bridges. Maimon recalled that at this stage of his life, he lived in absolute freedom, but isolation deepened his depression until he nearly drowned himself in a canal in Holland. He reported that, completely drunk and in despair, he stood at the edge of a deep canal and leaned his body forward over the water so as to fall into it. But cowardice kept him from doing the deed, and he clung to life. In Hamburg, he addressed a Lutheran pastor and asked to convert to Christianity, but the pastor refused, saying that Maimon was too much of a philosopher to become Christian. Rationalism was too strong with him, and faith must make reason submit. Finally, though he was already thirty years old, he was accepted at the Christianeaum Gymnasium in Altona. At this station in his wanderings, about seven years after he had abandoned his family, a Polish Jew, who had been sent to seek him, tracked him down and demanded that he return immediately to his home or that he send a bill of divorce and free his wife, Sara, from her status as an abandoned woman. Maimon hardened his heart and refused, telling the emissary that he did not wish to divorce his wife for no reason. However, he said that it was impossible for him to return to Poland and live a pointless life. Raphael Cohen, the local rabbi, summoned him to appear before a court, but Maimon denied his authority and stated that, as a student at the gymnasium, he was not subject to him. The conversation that nevertheless took place between the two degenerated into a confrontation and ended in a parting of the ways. The rabbi, who had known Maimon in Poland, was shocked by his appearance, telling him he had been sure that he was destined for greatness in the world of Torah; alas, how could he have changed so much? In Maimon’s memoirs, this encounter is staged as a satirical scene, in which Enlightenment overcomes religious authority, deepening his alienation from the rabbinical elite. Meanwhile, in 1785, the rector of the gymnasium awarded him his longed-for certification: “His talent for understanding all that is good, beautiful, and useful, and, above all, everything in the sciences that requires a strong intellectual effort as well as deep and abstract thinking, is, I would say, extraordinary.” When he left, Maimon arrogantly added, the teachers said that he had been an honor to their gymnasium.46 Maimon chose the rector of the gymnasium in Hamburg over Rabbi Raphael Cohen, in recognition of the diploma he had received and with the feeling of success at having broken through the boundaries of Jewish society and

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culture. There was no turning back from this point in Maimon’s journey on the course that led westward from Poland. The rebellious and heroic plot, around which he wove the story of his life at the end of the century, sharply and with dramatic polarity, was one of redemption by means of his free will and reason. He dismissed his wife’s distress in his revolutionary consciousness of cultural conversion. The emissary apparently reported Maimon’s refusal to Sara, but she did not give up and continued to struggle for her freedom. After another brief stay in Berlin and a failed effort to be included in the projects of the young Haskalah movement by writing books of science, Maimon moved to Breslau. He supported himself as a private tutor, found a society of merry, dissolute souls, and spent his time in taverns. In 1787, his wife tracked him down again and traveled with their son David from Lithuania to Breslau, where she confronted her husband. Maimon could not but acknowledge her courage, though he called her a vulgar woman in her education and conduct. She demanded that he either return to Poland with her or give her a bill of divorce. At first he tried to evade her, saying he would raise money for her. Mainly, he tried to convince his son to stay in Germany with him, to make him understand that Haskalah and good manners were not only not damaging to religion, but favorable to it. Though he refused to divorce Sara, Maimon insisted that he could not live happily in Poland and that she could not live happily in Germany with him. Even when he appeared before a rabbinical court, he kept on making difficulties, confounding the dayan and expressing contempt for him. Finally that rabbi exploded in rage and began to defame and revile Maimon, calling him a cursed heretic. Maimon was still reluctant to separate from the wife he had once loved. However, to preserve his freedom of conscience, he explained that a man like himself, who had lived in Germany for several years and freed himself from the superstitions and prejudices of religion, as well as its coarse manners and customs, could not return willingly to his former barbarous and miserable situation. Finally, after Sara pleaded with him once again, he agreed to the divorce. This time the separation was complete. The family was dissolved, and Sara and David returned to Poland.47 Maimon went back to Berlin, and his friends collected contributions for him, so he wouldn’t starve to death. Isaac Euchel did not give up in his efforts to enlist him for Haskalah. He published a short article in Hameasef in 1789, but he was already immersed in the work that, in the last decade of his life, would make him a German philosopher, further breaking the bonds that still connected him to the Jews. In the spring of 1784, Euchel himself took a trip of a few months from Königsberg to “the home of his ancestors, to Copenhagen, the city of the great

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king of Denmark.” In contrast to his bitter contemporary, the cultural immigrant Maimon, who was then trying to pass from the “dark” world to the new one, with the intercession of the gymnasium in Hamburg, Euchel made sure that his trip would have public significance in the framework of the Haskalah vision of the future. He was only twenty-eight and was a university student and private tutor in the homes of rich patrons. He also was already the editor of the publication founded by the Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language, which established the Haskalah movement. He went through the stages of his journey as though tracing the map of modernization from the viewpoint of a supervisor on behalf of Jewish Enlightenment. His friends wrote admiring and congratulatory rhymes in the album of his trip. In the letters he sent to his student, Michael Friedländer, later published in Hameasef, he described his experiences. In what he hoped would be the high point of his voyage, in a letter to Frederik VI (1768–1839), the crown prince and actual ruler of Denmark, he revealed his great ambition to lead the rehabilitation of Jewish society by means of a modern educational system. “Not all travelers have the same goal,” Euchel explained to his student. Some want to do business and discover markets, some seek out learned men to study with and to frequent rich libraries, and some are interested only in looking for “liquor drinkers and houses of pleasure,” he noted. In contrast, he was traveling to visit his family in Copenhagen, where he was born, but also to see to what extent the Enlightenment had already conquered that part of Europe, especially among the Jews: “Have they already begun to graze in the gardens of wisdom or have they withdrawn their hands from it?” He was seized with enthusiasm when, in the small city of Heiligenbeil, he met the parents of a Jewish student in Königsberg. Euchel delivered a letter from him and told them that their son “was diligent in his study and had acquired wisdom and a good name, above all the young men in the college.” The elderly parents burst into tears of joy and appreciation. This confirmed Euchel’s confidence in the success of the vanguard of Maskilim, educated in German academies like himself, to shed their light on the surroundings. On the next stage of his route, which led to Danzig, the travelers stopped at an inn in the town of Braunsberg, in East Prussia. Euchel was horrified to see a stronghold of the old world with his own eyes. Braunsberg was a fortified Polish Catholic town that had been taken over by Prussia in the partition of the past decade, and a Franciscan monastery stood in its center. “A remnant of the days of ignorance can still be seen there,” Euchel noted, marking the place in black ink on the map of his journey. “The light of wisdom has not shone upon it.” He attacked the hypocrisy of the Christian clergy (“Priests walk barefoot to torture themselves in public, but in secret they stuff and fatten

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themselves with wine and liquor as they please; they have made a covenant for their eyes, not to look at a maiden, and in the secrecy of their tent they lie in wait for pure blood”). He confessed that he had learned all this from a visit of no longer than half an hour and from looking at passersby from the tavern window. He quickly departed from Braunsberg, because his “soul was disgusted by a town like that, bound in the chains of stupidity.”48 After a cordial welcome from the Maskilim in Berlin, Euchel went on to Hamburg and thence to Denmark. His mood was especially good. He believed he was capable of influencing, of resetting the clock of Jewish history, of pointing to a better future, and of effecting a cultural revolution by controlling education. In a long and detailed document that he wrote in Copenhagen, Euchel explained the grave crisis to Frederik VI. In his letter, dated October 21, 1784, Euchel argued that not only were reforms on the part of the state and tolerant rulers needed, but a determined war against the “ignorance” to which the Jews were subject was required, because of the damaging and degrading influence of the rabbinical leadership and the teachers of Torah, most of whom were from Poland, “the coarsest region in Europe.” For him as “a true Jew,” sensitive to the fate of his people, this crisis was a source of deep shame. The Jews of his time were still a savage nation in need of deep rehabilitation. The time had come for the new elite of Maskilim to take educational leadership in hand, to make possible the expansion of knowledge, rationalization of religion, uprooting of superstition, and improvement of morality. Presenting himself as the leader of the Maskilim, Euchel called himself a Danish patriot and also a “moral physician” for the Jews, revealing the weaknesses of his brethren.49 His fierce criticism of the “malady of the Jew,” his statement that “the rabbi is the most ignorant of all,” his sharp separation between Germans and Poles, his use of the lexicon of humanism and happiness (“Oh! What a brilliant vision of the future, what happiness will the fruit [of modern education] bring”), his tolerance, and his image of “our enlightened century” all make the letter to the crown prince of Denmark one of the most outspoken documents of Haskalah. In its Jewish context, was no less radical than Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?,” published that year. Euchel, enthusiastic and yearning for a dramatic change in the life of the Jews, knew very well that his vision was far-reaching: “It would be a most exaggerated fantasy, that I might convince myself that I could institute a direct reform in Judaism,” he conceded to the Danish ruler. Indeed, as with his initiative to establish a modern Jewish school in Königsberg three years previously, this time, as well, nothing was accomplished. His mighty call “to bring happiness to my nation and perfection to humanity” went unheeded.

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A young Italian poet from Mantua, Shmuel Romanelli (1757–1814), found himself in Morocco almost by chance. Without planning to, after arriving in the British fortress of Gibraltar while on his way back from London, as he was afraid to cross the border into hostile Spain, he was waiting for a ship to return him to Italy and made an impulsive decision (“In my haste, I replied: I’ll go”) to accompany a businessman on his way to “the Berber kingdom.” His Hebrew travel journal, Masa be’arav (A Voyage to Arab Lands), about his wanderings between 1787 and 1790 among the cities of the independent state ruled by Sultan Mehmet Ben Abdullah El Hatib III (1710–1790), was a European Jew’s penetrating accounting of his identity. While he was repelled by the backwardness of both the Muslims and Jews of North Africa, at the same time, as a tourist, he was curious about their way of life. He sought out diplomats from Austria, Sweden, Italy, and England, but he occasionally wore the local costume. He learned to speak Arabic and to ride on mules, showing a great deal of identification with the fate of his brethren, some of whose ancestors, as he knew, had fled from Spain. The experience of a man who had just left the metropolis of London for Tangiers, Tétouan, Marrakech, and Mogador was fundamentally an absolute encounter with the other, enabling him to test his consciousness of modernity. The poverty, neglect, and superstition and the lack of hygiene and table manners nauseated him. Marriage customs such as displaying the bridal sheet in public seemed revolting. The women didn’t know how to arrange their hair and costume, “and the science of music is invisible to all eyes.” Like Euchel and Maimon, the cultural compass that guided him on his journey was the lexicon of the Enlightenment, by means of which he marked the boundary between Morocco and Europe. Not only are the roads in poor repair and hard to traverse, Romanelli explained to his European Jewish reader, who became acquainted for the first time with that mysterious country, but here everything remains natural, and the hand of man does not try to improve it; “it should not occur to you that their roads, like our roads, going straight through passes, with in good repair.” In general, “the Ishmaelite lies on the ground all day long, languid and ignorant, bound by the shackles of his benighted religion.” His culture is also inferior, he continued, because there are almost no books to be found (“the Arabs are a foolish nation, there is no printing, no authors, the Koran is all they study”), criticism of the religion and of the prophet is forbidden, everything is accepted with acquiescence as a decree from heaven, and it appears there is no possibility of “arousing their soul from the slumber of indolence and awakening their hearts for learning.”50

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However, during the first days of the journey, this feeling of superiority was already put to the test, and Romanelli found a new compass for himself— cultural relativity. When he took part in a wedding celebration, he reported, he saw for the first time in his life a girl doing a belly dance to the sound of clay drums: “Her head was covered up to the shoulder with a shawl on both her arms, one above her shoulders, and the other beneath it, toward the belly, and she slowly turned with soft arms.” At first “I thought she was going crazy, but they told me that this was the way they dance in their cities.” As he had already attended the Italian opera, the dancing seemed crude to him, and he asked the reader of his journal, “Can a man restrain himself seeing them and not fill his mouth with laughter?” But, on second thought, as though he had imbibed postcolonial criticism, Romanelli suddenly understood that he had been mistaken, and in this encounter both sides were observing each other: “However strange the actions of the people of the Maghreb may seem to us, so strange must our actions seem to them, and the truth is that everything is vanity.” His opinion about the local Jews was also not unequivocal. They “are good-hearted, they give charity, they love the stranger, they honor the Torah, and study it, and they greatly honor the Jews of Europe who go there,” though their isolation from knowledge of the world “sinks their hearts in the mire of foolishness and gullibility. . . . The river of wisdom has not appeared or reached them up to now, to clear away errors and the vanities of youth.” Although Torah study in Morocco did not suit his viewpoint as a “researcher,” he appreciated it from a relative point of view: “Their manner of study is clearer than that of the men of Poland and closer to the path of the Orientals, and they have a broad grasp of Kabbalah, the refuge of those acquiring wisdom without being entangled in investigations.” Romanelli did not wander around Morocco only as a know-itall who advocated fundamental change without considering the local culture. To a degree, he fit into the strange world where he was hosted in homes, grew a beard, gave sermons in the synagogue, served as a secretary for consuls, worked for Eliahu Levi (the agent of the sultan), became closely familiar with the intrigues and corruption of Muslims and Jews, and at least twice fell hopelessly in love with local women (“Her beauty and innocence struck me without my knowing it”). Despite himself, Romanelli identified with the fate of the Jews: “On the way an Arab came and struck me on the head, that is their contemptuous manner, my heart was hot within me, and my eye was darkened with anger, and the voice of my blood called for revenge for the shaming.” This humiliation was just an example of the tribulation meted out by “the sword of religious fanaticism,” which must be removed from the world. He found that in Morocco,

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“the women are good looking and healthily fleshed, but they are comparable to beasts, and they have no share in wisdom, intelligence, or knowledge.” They do not know how to read Arabic or Spanish, he noted, and he was especially amazed to see that the women “do not even pray.” He found it hard to explain the double standard, seeing the many Jewish prostitutes: “Many are the whores among the daughters of Israel everywhere in the Maghreb, but in Mogador they are innumerable.” Perhaps it resulted inevitably from poverty and oppressive frameworks of life. Still, he was astonished to see “how these people, firm in their faith, allow there to be prostitutes among the daughters of Israel!”51 In the end, Romanelli, too, was a critic on behalf of the Enlightenment. In the middle of his travel diary, a shout bursts forth: “How long will this stupidity be a trap? Let us throw off the ropes and worship the Lord our God. Do we not yet know that the land has been lost and withered because of them, and they are to our detriment?” Romanelli escaped from Morocco by the skin of his teeth. He was caught in a wave of violence that struck the Jews hard. It arose after the death of the sultan and the ascent of his son, Yazid. Only by bribing a minister was he able to board a ship in Mogador, getting him to Amsterdam in five weeks. Feeling that he had been rescued from disaster, he roamed about the city streets with a sense of liberty, stunned by the adventures he had undergone, “and my heart was fearful from the tribulations of the land of darkness.” He went to Berlin and joined the circle of Maskilim there, and he was able to bless his good fortune: “Oh! The sky of Berlin, Oh! I saw it. I will no longer remember hard labor and troubles, all I underwent, the trials of a traveler.”52 Asher Lehman (1769–1858) came from the village of Zeckendorf in Franconia. The memoirs of his youth are much more intimate, with no pretentions of reforming the world. Like Maimon’s autobiography, My Journal traces a path of life that begins with the escape from a low point of departure. Neither of them fulfilled their original ambition of joining the elite of Torah scholars. Lehman’s expectations were far more modest, and he did not regard success as crossing a border, as social criticism, or as promoting renewal. Rather, he was satisfied with establishing an affluent German-Jewish bourgeois family. Nor did he intend to publish the story of his life as a model of striving for truth at any cost. Rather, he saw it as a testament for his descendants, for them to learn the value of hard work and trust in God from his experience. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to study Torah in Prague with only five gilders in his pocket, but he quickly discovered that in fact he would have to fight a battle for existence at the bottom of Jewish society. He understood that his parents had left him to his fate, because they preferred saving for dowries for his sisters, and they had

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already invested money in his older brother’s studies in a yeshiva. However, unlike Maimon’s autobiography, My Journal was not written in bitterness, nor does it contain social criticism. His daily worries about food, shelter from the elements, a bed to sleep in, and a Jewish family who would host him on the Sabbath left no place for extensive and deep thoughts. Sleeping in a poor inn gave him scabies, walking in the snow and riding in an open wagon froze his legs, but he enjoyed eating bread and butter, a double portion of noodle pudding, flour soup, and cakes with filling. Lehman crossed the border into Bohemia, and, despite the short distance, he immediately felt like a foreigner. The language, the dress, and the foods were different. He passed through Eger and Pilsen before reaching Prague. He depended on “tickets” for hospitality, hired himself out as a tutor, and mainly supported himself as a servant from 1786 to 1789. Awareness of the social gap struck him when he was invited to the home of the man who held the tobacco monopoly in Eger. Lehman wrote enthusiastically: What a table appeared before my eyes! In all the days of my life I never saw its like again! A long dining hall, in front of everyone were two large silver candlesticks. . . . Everyone had two silver plates, for soup and for the roast, everything was made of silver, quite a few forks and spoons, and the number of plates was as the number of foods, all kinds of stews. . . . More than I ate, I looked around me. His wife sparkled with her many jewels, and like her, their daughters. His servants all wore luxurious costumes.

His dream of studying Torah in Prague receded into the distance. To support himself, he worked as a servant in the home of Baruch Singer, the chief cantor in the synagogue chorus: “I had to bring food to the table, to remove the plates from it, to sharpen the knives . . . to help the maids in making the beds.” He found another, exhausting job with a leather merchant, R. Ya’aqov, whom he defined as “very religious and a millionaire.” The physical labor was hard: “Every day, [I have] to pick up five hundred to a thousand large hides and the fur of calf and sheep,” Lehman wrote. “The winter was so cold that we bound sheepskins around our legs, and when our hands touched the wet furs, they took frozen bubbles from our fingers.” In consolation, he was treated like a member of the family. He walked “arm in arm with the daughter of his boss, even to plays in the theater, also shopping, I always accompanied her.” The aspiration for a happy life was shared by many people in the eighteenth century, but it didn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Lehman’s ideal of happiness was very personal and devoid of high expectations. From a distance of several decades, he wrote nostalgically about his life as a young servant—working hard but also managing

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to save money, enjoying good treatment and falling in love with a girl—and he called these “my happiest years before I married.”53

“A Per son Doe s Not H av e th e Pow er Tru ly to Con v ert from a R eligion H e Suck l ed w ith His Moth er’s M i lk”: Disintegr ating I dentiti e s The possibility of conversion as a solution to the misery of life, as breaking down barriers, as a change of heart, as competition for the correct faith, or as a deep change in social identity hovered over the lives of the Jews in the eighteenth century. Maimon considered conversion to Christianity in a moment of despair, as we have seen. For several young women in Berlin, this was another rung in climbing the ladder to high society or to satisfy unfulfilled yearnings for religion. Jews wandering on the highways were often subject to pressures and seductions to improve their lives in return for abandoning their Judaism. When Lehman returned to Germany, he went from village to village as a peddler. “The Catholic peasants, their wives, and their daughters said with a single voice: ‘Alas, a handsome lad like you, too bad you’ll go down into the pit and burn in hell. Be baptized as a Christian!’”54 The Italian communities subject to Pope Pius VI continued to live under the constant threat of forced conversion. In early 1784, the Jews of Rome sent an appeal to their brethren in various places in Europe, telling how, in a raid on the ghetto on the night of December 9, 1783, two orphan children were kidnapped, and “they were incited by temptations to embrace an alien bosom, and in the end we were told that they themselves, of their own free will, agreed to apostatize, and mourning and sorrow are great in the house of Judah.” The effort to conceal the brother and sister, aged eleven and seven, failed after hostages were taken in their place. This appeal was part of a desperate campaign of protest and intercession, with the help of Christian jurists, to prevent similar cases, because “what was done in this instance was absolute injustice, open robbery, and a perversion of justice, according to their religion and the decrees of their popes!” Shmuel Romanelli, who certainly was well acquainted with what was happening in Italy, was afraid he would have to go to Spain, and, as it was known, “no Jewish man would intentionally pass through there without converting.” It would never occur to him to effect such a radical border crossing: “A person does not have the power truly to convert from a religion he suckled with his mother’s milk, just as he is powerless to change his birth.”55 The real situation was quite different. In this decade, leaving Judaism for the rival religion or to cooperate in the creation of a boundary-breaking circle was

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often the meaning of personal revolt against the conventions, a radical expression of independence and the hope for happiness. The young women and men from Berlin and Vienna who sought to fulfill themselves in high society exemplified this. However, the drive to intentionally erase the identity that had been acquired at birth and fostered by family, community, and the house of study also existed among the elite of Torah scholars. Shortly after Romanelli sailed to Morocco, Joseph Heydeck arrived in Madrid as an expert in Judaism, an advisor to the Inquisition in censoring books, and as a Hebrew teacher. This was one of the final stages in the life of Moshe Levi, who was born in Germany in 1755, studied in the yeshivas of Metz and Prague, and, he claimed, was ordained by Rabbi Landau at the age of twenty-one. For more than a decade, he wandered from place to place and apparently converted twice—first in London and then, to Roman Catholicism, in Cologne (1783). Before sailing to America in 1787 with his new name and identity, he worked as a teacher of Eastern languages in Dublin and as a secretary of the British Museum library. According to Ezra Stiles’s diary, Heydeck worked for a short time as a missionary to the Cherokee tribe in South Carolina. Like other converts who were imbued with a sense of mission, he aimed to call for the conversion of all the Jews in the world.56 No traces of the alterations of Levi/Heydeck’s life and his travels remain in sources that would enable us to hear the reactions of the Jewish surroundings, from which he severed himself. In contrast, we can gauge the tension, surprise, and feverish activity surrounding the conversion of another young man, who grew up in a well-connected family of the Vilna community. Hirsch Ben Abba Wolf, a seventeen years old yeshiva student, had been married for two years, and was the father of a child when on the winter of 1787, he literally crossed the border. On Sunday morning, December 2, he slipped out of his parents’ house, walked through the gates of a nearby Dominican church, and received the bishop’s protection. Just a few months before sisters Sara and Mariana Meyer, from Berlin, took the similar step of secret conversion, which stunned their family, Hirsch deserted Judaism for Christianity. On the same day, he told the priests that he had been thinking of fleeing from Jewish society for some time. His father, Abba Wolf, who was then in Warsaw, was a leader of the Vilna community and was one of the heads of the party of the Kahal, who regarded him as the successor to Rabbi Shmuel Ben Avigdor, a man they hated. He couldn’t countenance the disaster his son had brought down upon him. First he complained to the authorities that his sworn adversaries, those who had slandered him by claiming that he himself had converted, had now kidnapped his son and forced him to enter the Church. A month later, on January 4, 1788, Hirsch declared before a large forum of priests and theologians that, in recognition

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of the errors of the Talmud and the inferiority of Judaism, he was firm in his resolve to convert. At that moment, a complex episode began to evolve. The leaders of the Jewish community of Vilna established a special committee to rescue the young man. The Vilna Gaon accorded his religious authority to that effort. The close family—especially the parents—and Shimon, Hirsch’s brother, were prepared to go to any length to erase the shame. They planned to seize Hirsch quickly and remove him from the Church before the baptism ceremony. For this purpose, they hired Kwiatkowski, a young former Jew who had converted in Grodno, paying him to visit Hirsch, befriend him, and try to take him away. They failed to prevent the conversion. Within a few days, a public, festive baptism was held, and Hirsch Ben Abba Wolf became Wincenty Neuman. Nevertheless, the plan proceeded. When the two young converts went to a café owned by Jews, kidnappers fell upon Hirsch, disguised him in women’s clothing, and took him out of the city in a carriage on a route that ultimately led across the border, to Königsberg, in Prussia. Public proclamations called the event an unforgivable blow against Christianity. Those directly involved fled their homes. A special tribunal began an investigation. Many people were arrested, and great effort was put forth to follow Hirsch/Neuman’s trail and to put Kwiatkowski on trial. The Vilna Gaon was interrogated but refused to answer the questions thrown at him. He even spent several weeks in prison. The affair lasted for more than three years. Hirsch/Neuman was returned to Vilna in the end. He testified to the secular authorities that he had been abducted, tried to escape, and been transported to Germany. Abba Ben Wolf was exonerated of responsibility, but his wife and his son Shimon were convicted. Kwiatkowski was sentenced to a hundred lashes, which he would receive every Friday for five weeks, and afterward he had to leave Poland permanently or be imprisoned for life. Wincenty Neuman remained a Roman Catholic. The judicial battle and the struggle, which did not draw the line at violating the law, failed to change the situation caused by his decision to shift the course of his life in another direction, by his own hand, and to leave behind his chagrined family and the Jewish community.57 In the 1780s in Central Europe, the Jewish-Christian encounter in the climate of the Enlightenment also gave rise to a shared framework that did not require conversion. This opportunity is what attracted Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld (1758–1820) in 1785. He belonged to a learned family from Karlsruhe, he studied at a German gymnasium and at the University of Strasbourg, and he joined a special order of the Freemasons, which opened its gates to Jews as well. Hirschfeld was an ambitious young man who pursued knowledge and

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was associated with the Maskilim in Berlin. He worked as secretary for Jewish businessmen, and he was possessed by a feeling of marginality and even of persecution. In Innsbruck, in the Tyrol, he met the Bavarian aristocrat Hans von Ecker und Eckhoffen (1754–1809), who, a few years earlier in Vienna, had established the Asiatic Brethren. The ideologist of the order was none other than Baron Thomas von Schönfeld, formerly the Frankist Moses Dobruška, who, after his conversion in Vienna, lived as a German writer and businessman close to the emperor, and he introduced symbols and ideas of Kabbalah and Sabbateanism into the Asiatic Brethren. As formulated in the bylaws, the doctrine of toleration enabled them to open the gates: “Any brother of any religion, of any class, of any system, no matter what, so long as he is an honest man in his thoughts and deeds, can join the Order. Fundamentally, because the welfare and happiness of humanity is the only aim of our method, it is impossible for it to be conditional on anything—not on the religion into which we were born nor on the class in which we were raised.” Religious syncretism characterized this secret order, which, as Gershom Scholem emphasized, was “a unique institution in the mystical Masonic tradition, an institution whose essence was the mixture of Christin and Jewish elements.” The holidays of both religions were celebrated, and the Jewish members bore the names of Jesus’s disciples combined with Kabbalistic appellations. Hirschfeld was Marcus Ben Bina; the former dayan of Minsk, Baruch Schick is mentioned in the records of the Asiatic Brethren as Petrus Ben El H.ai; and Nathan Arnstein, of the Viennese elite, was Johannes Ben Ah.dut. When Schönfeld resigned, Hirschfeld succeeded him, and after Joseph II restricted the secret orders in Austria, he accompanied Ecker from Vienna to northern Germany to continue the Asiatic Brethren there. However, they ended up quarreling, and the Jewish members left. Nevertheless, it was important to Hirschfeld to cling to his belief that the Order was indeed a neutral meeting point for Jews and Christians because there was a single shared mystical teaching that was the basis of a single pure and true religion. In the context of their time and aspirations, Katz explained the attraction of the Asiatic Brethren for its Jewish members: they hoped to find a new social anchorage outside the framework of Judaism, without being forced to deny it by converting to Christianity.58 This vision of a religion that would unite all humanity apparently stood before the eyes of Joseph H.aim Sumbal (1762–1804), the son of a Moroccan court Jew, who arrived in Copenhagen in 1788. There, on Shavuot, he proclaimed a new religion whose values of virtue and tolerance were drawn from the Enlightenment. Sumbal embarrassed the audience by stating that he was neither

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Jew, Christian, Muslim, or pagan. His listeners were probably expecting to see a wealthy Jew in Turkish dress forgo his Judaism and were disappointed when he proclaimed that hybrid identity.59 Enlightened theologian and educator Friedrich Gedike (1754–1803) reported in the Berlinische Monatsschrift that while the conversion of Jews had become more common in his time, “the conversion of a Christian to Judaism is undoubtedly rare and exceptional.” Whereas conversion to Christianity was liberating and opened up new possibilities, conversion to Judaism entailed the loss of rights, danger of punishment, and membership in a discriminated group. This was the introduction to a story that Gedike published about the crossing of borders in a direction that appeared to oppose the direction of history. Nevertheless, an official in the judicial system of the city of Nikolai (now Mikołów) in Prussian Silesia, Joseph Steblitzki, converted to Judaism in 1785, disrupting public opinion and government officials, who could not decide whether to punish him or how to determine his status. In his interrogation, Steblitzki stated that he had been attracted to Judaism for years. Recently he had begun to eat only kosher food, he attended synagogue on the Sabbath and holidays, he read the Bible, and he decided that Judaism was the true religion. At the age of sixty, he decided to convert and undergo circumcision. He grew a beard and went to Cracow, and, because the Jews were afraid of taking the risk of persuading him to convert, he received a knife and instructions about circumcising himself. The Biblical Abraham had also done so, and after the operation, he became Joseph Abraham, a true Jew. He hoped he would not be punished, as he had done no damage to the state. He no longer had relations with his wife, who was a Christian and was therefore forbidden to him. By converting, he had followed the dictates of his conscience. Mariana, his wife, confirmed his testimony and said that she knew about his approach to Judaism, that the heat of youth had already faded, and that at their age they no longer had sexual relations. She requested that, despite his having become a Jew, she would not be prevented from living together with her husband of thirty years. The instructions that arrived from Berlin were surprising: Joseph Abraham was not punished, and the couple was not required to separate. Gedike was astonished. The woman, pious in her Christian beliefs, continued to love her Jewish husband and was determined that only death would part them, while Joseph, who had converted to Judaism, thanked his good fortune in being a resident of Friedrich II’s kingdom, known for its religious tolerance.60 In the winter of 1787, Lord George Gordon’s hiding place was discovered, and the policeman, MacManus, was sent from London to arrest him by Judge Francis Buller. At 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 7, he knocked at the door

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of a Jewish woman peddler who sold smoked fish on Dudley Street in Birmingham. Gordon introduced himself with his new identity as Israel Ben Abraham, having become a Jew. He was circumcised and would remain Jewish. At the start of the decade, he had been a member of Parliament and a leader of the Protestant opposition in the Gordon Riots. As in the case of Steblitzki, Gordon’s conversion had wide reverberations. Items in the English press were headlined “Christian Becomes a Jew,” and writers sensationalized it, trying to supply as many details as possible to the curious readers. Gordon wore Jewish clothing, and his long beard was particularly conspicuous, but he retained the courteous manners of a British gentleman. Gordon told the policeman who came with an arrest warrant that he did not recognize the right of any authority to injure him or anyone of his faith. He claimed that, by converting to Judaism, he had gained the greatest happiness of his life, and he did not understand why there weren’t many other converts like himself. A number of Jews who surrounded him also believed that “his excellency was Moses, who had risen from the dead to teach them the way to illuminate the entire world.”61 Diligent journalists discovered that during the past four months, Gordon had hidden with a poor family in the Jewish neighborhood of Birmingham, and there his connection with Judaism had deepened, until he had asked to convert. In that way, he had in effect gone underground after returning from Holland, where he had fled from the court in London. In early 1787, Gordon had been tried for incitement and slander. A pamphlet that he wrote—expressing the protest of prisoners in Newgate against the arbitrariness of the law, the severity of punishments, and especially the transportation to Australia—was seen as another attempt to kindle the fires of rioting, and the criticism that he leveled in another protest pamphlet about Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, for her tyrannical rule, provided an excuse for the legal authorities to accuse him of slandering her and damaging the fragile political relations between England and France. Gordon fled before being sentenced, but now he was arrested and taken to London. The court refused to accept his story that he was just a reformer who wanted what was good for England, and on January 28, 1788, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. By this stage in his life, no political supporters stood behind him. His family was ashamed of him, rumor had it that he was insane, and public opinion mocked him. Political cartoons and ballads about Lord Gordon who became a Jew made a mockery of his conversion. In one nasty caricature, he was called “Moses of Birmingham,” and in a ballad that was printed and sung in the streets of London, he was called mad for running from the religion of John Calvin to

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join the Tribe of Gad. In a color picture on a pottery vase, Gordon is shown lying on a table after a girl has circumcised him with a pair of scissors. Behind her, a rabbi holds a prayer book. On the other side, a used-clothing salesman and his wife look on curiously, while underneath him, a boy who holds a peddler’s box is picking his pocket. The satirical caption expresses a good deal of the public embarrassment and surprise: “Lord George Riot Made a Jew.” There was great curiosity about this aristocrat and “free radical” who had crossed the lines, was willing to join a despised minority, and finally was thrown into jail. Gordon’s conversion in 1787 was an act of political defiance, an extension of his identification with deprived groups, his struggle against Catholicism, and his attitude of dissident opposition. He had repeatedly challenged the monarchy, Parliament, and the Church of England. However, it was neither a hasty decision nor a sign of madness. Rather, as with his contemporaries, such as Maimon and Steblitzki, it was an expression of the individual’s desire to change his life by himself, to be faithful to his own conscience, and to astonish the people around him. He had conducted his life as a masked ball, and for Gordon, circumcision and growing a beard were signs of the defiant revolution he had undergone. He started to study Hebrew during the 1780s, went deep into Bible studies, and became acquainted with the Jewish leaders in London. In a messianic proclamation issued in the summer of 1783, written against the background of the end of the war in America, Gordon encouraged the Jews to stand beside the Protestants against the Catholic Satan everywhere in the world: Hear, O Israel! All of Europe is in confusion. The rulers of Europe must destroy their idols and find the word of God. In an angry letter to Joseph II (August 10, 1785), he complained about the shameful treatment of the Jews in his empire and about the way the Austrian diplomatic representatives in London had deprecated him for loving Jews. Gordon’s conversion to Judaism was another step taken by a free radical with a revolutionary spirit who embraced the poor, convicts sentenced to deportation, fighters for independence in America, opponents of the French monarchy, and Jewish victims of discrimination.62 Gordon’s spirit of protest did not die down even during the last five years of his life, which he spent in Newgate. He dispatched letters and pamphlets from his cell and followed the French Revolution with sympathy. For him, the day when the Bastille fell was one that gave mankind new life. He led a busy life in his “prison salon.” Many guests visited him, including “Polish Jews.” He demonstrated his new religion before everyone with prayers, by observing the commandments, and by insisting on kosher food and wine. The Ten Commandments, in Hebrew, and a sack with his prayer shawl and tefillin hung on

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the walls of his cell. Every evening a dinner was held with many participants, and occasionally the guests enjoyed music and dancing.63 Lord Gordon’s aristocratic manners bound a kind of court or salon with the Jewish ceremonies of the convert, Israel Ben Abraham. This court might be comparable to Jacob Frank’s court, which was held almost at the same time (1787–1791) with his daughter Eve in the palace in Offenbach, near Frankfurt. Under cover of secrecy and obscurity, the members of the Frankist secret society held religious ceremonies and military exercises in the forest. They observed Catholicism punctiliously, but the uniforms, the disguises, Frank’s Oriental costume, and Eve’s fashionable clothing contributed to a mixture of identities and demonstrated what Pawel Maciejko called religious exoticism, which, as it did in Gordon’s case, attracted considerable attention.64 In the final years of Frank’s life, his Jewish origins were not in evidence. In contrast, Gordon showed great interest in events among his new brethren. He established solid tests for himself as to who was worthy of being called a true Jew, and he instructed the prison guards to bar entry to Jews who did not observe religious law and shaved their beards. One of these, Angel Lyon, tried to persuade him that he should not be excluded, because outward appearance was not the main thing, but Gordon clung to his opinion in a long, detailed letter written in June 1789. It was a kind of reproachful sermon attacking the wealthy elite of the London Jews, whose men sought to integrate into the great city and who, in Gordon’s opinion, purposely disguised their identity. In their ambition to rise in society and enrich themselves, they were embarrassed to appear with beards before Christian trades in the stock exchange or before the aristocracy in the theater. He regarded the Jewish beard as a touchstone not only of their faith but also of their willingness to display solidarity with their people. Whereas the Jews of Jerusalem, Istanbul, Poland, and France grew beards proudly, in his opinion, the Jews of England were violating solidarity and standing in the way of redemption. The “Protestant rabbi,” as he was called in ridicule, therefore grew a particularly long beard in defiance, and he always wore a broad-brimmed black hat. In a letter, which he signed this time as Ashur Bar Judah, Lyon replied that he had been convinced by Gordon’s arguments and was letting his beard grow again.65 Gordon died of typhus in prison, the community he had chosen turned its back on him, and his family secretly arranged his burial in the church of St. James. However, on a medal minted in his honor, the familiar portrait of Lord Gordon as a bearded Jew appears, and his revolutionary message is inscribed on the reverse: “We were born free and will never die as slaves.”66

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Note s 1. See Franklin Kopitzsch, “Aufklärunmg und Bürgerlichkeit,” in Kultur und Gesellschaft in Deutschland von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Klaus Bohnen, Sven-Aorge Jorgensen, and Friedrich Schmöe (München: Fink Verlag, 1981), 57–82; Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), 295. 2. See Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 2005), 276–277. 3. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, sections 57, 65. 4. Johann Pezzl, Faustin, oder das philosophische Jahrhundert (Zürich: Unknown, 1783), 318–332. See Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in EighteenthCentury Europe, 277–278. 5. Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?,” Berlinische Monatsschrift 4 (1784): 481–494; Immanuel Kant, On History, ed. Lewis White Beck (London: Macmillan, 1986), 3–10. 6. Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” On History, 11–26. 7. Moses Mendelssohn, “On the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 8. See Lawrence Rotch, “Benjamin Franklin and the First Balloons,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 18 (April 1907): 259–274; Richard Holmes , The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London: Harper Collins, 2008), 125–162. 9. See Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 18–23, 42. 10. Mendelssohn, “Votum zu Möhsens Aufsatz über Aufklärung,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, 1 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1981), 111. 11. See Dean Phillip Bell, “Navigating the Flood Waters: Perspectives on Jewish Life in Early Modern Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 56 (2011): 29–52. 12. Elh.anan Tal, ed., Haqehila haashkenazit beamsterdam bamea hayod-h.et (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2010), 213–214. 13. See Alexandera Witze and Jeff Kanipe, Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of Laki, the Volcano that Turned Eighteenth-Century Europe Dark (London: Pegasus, 2017). 14. Ya’aqov Rivkind, “A klug lid ofin kalten vinter fun yor 1784,” Pinqas 1, no. 3 (1928): 193–199. 15. See Aubrey Pomerance, “῾Wasser wie nie seit Menschengedenken’: Eine unbekannte jiddische Quelle zum Rheinhochwasswer von 1784,” in Memoria—Wege

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jüdischen Erinnerns, Festschrift für Michael Brocke zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Brigit E. Klein and Christiane E. Mueller (Berlin: Metropol, 2005), 177–192. 16. Shimon Ben Ya’aqov Avraham Copenhagen, Sefer bekhi neharot (Amsterdam: Proops, 1784), fol. 19a. 17. Shimon Copenhagen , Sefer bekhi neharot, fol. 70a; and see Bell, “Navigating the Flood Waters,” 46. 18. Tal, Haqehila haashkenazit beamsterdam bamea hayud-h.et, 214. 19. Shimon Copenhagen , Sefer bekhi neharot, fols. 72–76a, 12a–b. 20. Leichrede des Herzogs Maximilian Julius Leopold von Braunschweig, gehalten vom Rabbiner Joseph [Rabbi ben Meir Teomim] zu Frankfurt an der Oder, Ins Deutsch übersezt von Eli Naphtali Cohen (Frankfurt on the Oder: Unknown, 1785); “Schreiben eines jüdischen Kaufmannes aus Frankfurt an der Oder . . . an seinen Freund zu Königsberg,” Zweyte Zugabe . . . Dem Sammler (October 5, 1785): 35–40; Naphtali Herz Wessely, “Hadukas leopold ish h.ai verav pe’alim,” Hameasef 2 (1785): 145–152. And see Meyer Kayserling, “Moses Mendelssohn’s Verhältniss zum Herzogl. Braunschweig’schen Hofe; Herzog Leopold von Braunschweig und die Juden,” Jeschurun 4 (1858): 308–314; David B. Ruderman, A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinhas Hurwitz and its Remarkable Legacy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014), 81–89. 21. See Lynn Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History (Boston: Bedford Books, 1996), 40–43; Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 150–156. 22. Wessely, “Likhvod hamoshel hatov melekh adir veish h.esed ludvig . . . melekh frantse,” Hameasef 3 (1786): 33–34. 23. “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 3 (1786): 176–181, 193–201; Wessely, Misped ‘al mot hamelekh hagadol haadir vehah.akham fridrikh hasheni (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1786). 24. See Adam Zamoyski, Poland, A History (London: William Cllins, 2009), 204–217; Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), 307–325. 25. Wessely, “Likhvod yozefus hasheni,” Hameasef 1 (1784): 161–165, 177–181. 26. No author, Leelohei ma’ozim ranei todot (Mantua: Unknown, 1789); No author, Drush hashevah. vehodaa (Prague: Unknown, 1789); Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, sections 58–63; and see Shlomo Simonson, Toldot hayehudim bedukasut mantova, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1963), 56–57; Tim Blanning, Joseph II (London: Routledge, 1994), 176–182. 27. Vincent Carretta, ed., Olaudah Equiano: The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings (London: Penguin, 2003), 330–332. 28. Ibid, 267; Benjamin Franklin, “Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery,” February 3, 1790, Benjamin Franklin Historical

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Society, accessed April 29, 2022, http://www.benjamin-franklin-history.org /petition-from-the-pennsylvania-society-for-the-abolition-of-slavery/. 29. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 139; Raphael Mahler, Jewish Emancipation: A Selection of Documents (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1941), 22–24. 30. See William Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 311–312; Joseph Michman, The History of Dutch Jewry during the Emancipation Period, 1787–1815 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 1–22; Tal, Haqehila haashkenazit beamsterdam bamea hayud-h.et, 214; D. M. Selwis, “Yehudei ashkenz beamasterdam mishnat 1635 ‘ad shnat 1795,” Meh.qarim ‘al toldot yahadut holand I (1975): 69–122 (esp. 117); Michman, “‘Ma’se eloqeinu,’ yehudei Amsterdam bama’arbolet hapolitit bishnat 1787,” in ‘Iyunim betoldot yehudei holand vesifrutam, ed. Michman (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1994), 45–98. 31. From the proclamations and registers of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam: Michman, “‘Ma’se eloqeinu,’” 81–82, 88–90. 32. See Margaret R. Hunt, Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Harlow: Longman, 2010), 337–339. 33. Documents from the rabbinical court in Frankfurt in Edward Fram, A Window on their World: The Court Diary of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim, Frankfurt am Main, 1773–1794 (Cincinnati: The Hebrew Union College, 2012), 319–324, 542–552. 34. Ezekiel Landau, Nod’a beyehuda, mahadora tanina, h.eleq even ha’ezer veh.oshen mishpat (Jerusalem: Unknown, 1960), sig. 21, 26, 33, 52, 57, 58. 35. See Claudia Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 224–236. 36. See Georg Kriegk, Deutsche Kulturbilder aus dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Verlag von Hirzel, 1874). 37. Old Bailey proceedings, August 30, 1786, accessed February 22, 2018, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org; John S. Levi and G. F. Bergman, Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers, 1788–1860 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 14–39. 38. Moshe Rosman, “Etgar trom feministi lamanhigut hayehudit bepolinlita bamea hashmone-‘esre: haqdamat teh.inat imahot lesara rivqa rah.el leah horovits,” in Lo yasur shevet miyehuda: hanhaga, rabanut veqehila betoldot yisrael, ed. Joseph Hacker and Yaron Harel, papers in honor of Professor Shim’on Schwartzfuchs (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 2011), 301–316; see also H.aim Liberman, “‘Teh.inat imahot’ ve‘teh.inat shlosha she’arim,’” Qiryat sefer 36 (1961): 119–122; Yemima H.ovav, ‘Alamot ahevukha: h.ayei hadat veharuah. shel nashim bah.evra haashkenazit bereshit ha’et hah.adasha (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009),

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105–108; Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 104–115. 39. Henriette Herz, Erinnerungen, Briefen und Zeunissen (Frankfurt: Insel, 1984), 11–12; see also Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew, Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749–1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967), ch. 4; Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013); See Barbara Hahn, The Jewess of Pallas Athena: This Too a Theory of Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 14–55; Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005); Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, “Remaining within the Fold: The Cultural and Social World of Sara Levy,” in Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin, ed. Rebecca Cypess and Nancy Sinkoff (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2018), 52–74. 40. See Herz, Erinnerungen, 27–53; Liliane Weissberg, Life as a Goddess: Henriette Herz Writes Her Autobiography (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2001); Naimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin, ch. 5. 41. Wilhelm von Humboldt to Henriette Herz (November 11, 1787) in Herz, Erinnerungen, 233–236. 42. See Hahn, The Jewess of Pallas Athena, 20–23; Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto, The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), ch. 7. 43. See Hilde Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein: A Daughter of the Enlightenment, 1758– 1818 (New York: Berg, 1991), 52–56. 44. See Warren I. Cohn, “The Moses Isaack Family Trust, its History and Significance,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 18 (1973): 267–279; Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973) 713–714. 45. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism, 50–52. See also Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 713–716; Rachel Mankin, “Moses Mendelssohn and Joseph II, Criticism, Admiration, and the Galician Connection,” in Moses Mendelssohn: Enlightenment, Religion, Politics, Nationalism, ed. Michah Gottlieb and Charles H. Mankin (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2015), 275–294. 46. The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, the Complete Translation, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Abraham P. Socher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 203–221. 47. Ibid., 222–229. 48. “Igrot yitsh.aq euchel letalmido mikhel friedlander” (Danzig 22 Iyar 5544 [1784]), Hameasef 2 (1785): 116–121, 137–142. 49. Isaac Euchel, “Isaac Abraham Euchels Plan zur Errichtung eines jüdschen Erziehungs-Instituts in Kiel, 1784,” in Die jüdische Freischule in Berlin (1778–1825), im

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Umfeld preussischer Bildungspolitik und jüdischer Kultusreform, Eine Quellensammlung, vol. 1, ed. Ingrid Lohmann (München: Waxmann, 2001), 236–244. 50. Shmuel Romanelli, Masa be’arav (Berlin 5552 [1792]), selected writings, ed. H.aim Schirmann (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1968), 21–26, 43, 54–55. See H.aim Schirmann, Shmuel Romanelli, hameshorer vehanoded (Jerusalem: The Schocken Institute, 1969); Schirmann, “Qovets shirei shmuel romanelli beketav yad,” Tarbiz 35 (1966): 373–395; Andrea Schatz, “Detours in a ῾Hidden Land’: Shmuel Romanelli’s Masa’ ba’rav,” in Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History, ed. Ra’anan Boustan, Oren Kosansky, and Marina Rustow (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 164–184. 51. Romanelli, Masa be’arav, 28–29, 31–33, 75–76. 52. Romanelli, Masa be’arav, 53–130, 144. 53. Ascher Lehmann Weldtsberg, Mein Tagebuch von 1784 bis jetzt (Gerwisch: Privatdruck, 1936). 54. Lehmann, Mein Tagebuch von 1784 bis jetzt, 25. 55. See Cecil Roth, “The Forced Baptism of 1783 at Rome and the Community of London,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 16, no. 2 (1925): 105–116; Romanelli, Masa be’arav, 23. 56. See Roth, “῾Don’ Juan Josef Heydeck,” Journal of Jewish Studies 2, no. 4 (1951): 187–194; H.aim Beinart, “H.uan yosef heideck; gilgulav shel mumar,” in Peraqim betoldot hah.evra hayehudit biyemei habeinayim uva’et hah.adasha, muqdashim leprofesor ya’aqov katz, ed. ‘Immanuel Etkes and Yosef Salmon (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1980), 171–181. 57. See Israel Klausner, Vilna betequfat hagaon: hamilh.ama haruh.anit vehah.evratit beqehilat vilna betequfat hagra (Jerusalem: Sinai, 1942), 227–244, 262–267, 290–292; Israel Klausner, Vilna yerushalayim delita, dorot rishonim 1495– 1881 (Tel Aviv: Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, 1988), 109–110; Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven: Yale Unversity Press, 2013), 31–33. 58. See Jacob Katz, Bonim h.ofshim veyehudim (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1968), 32–50; Gershom Scholem, “Qariera shel frankist: moshe dubroshka vegilgulav,” Meh.qarim umeqorot letoldot hashabtaut vegilguleiha (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1974), 151–171; Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 225–231; Katz, “Moses Mendelsshon und E. J. Hirschfeld,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 7 (1964): 295–311; Scholem, “Ein verschollener jüdischer Mystiker der Aufklärung: E. J. Hirschfeld,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 7 (1962): 247–278. 59. See Todd M. Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 277–278. 60. Friedrich Gedike, “Geschichte des ehemaligen Rathmann’s Joseph Steblitzki zu Nikolai in Oberschlesien, nunmehrigen Juden Joseph Abraham,”

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Berlinische Monatsschrift 2 (1786): 152–173. See also Eduard Biberfeld, “Joseph Abraham Steblicki,” Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums 20 (1893): 181–198. 61. “Lord George Gordon turned Jew,” Bristol Journal, December 15, 1787; Birmingham Gazette, December 10, 1787; “Lord George Gordon turned Jew,” The Gentelman’s and London Magazine, January 1788, 45. See the various documents in Israel Solomons, “Lord George Gordon’s Conversion to Judaism,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 7 (1915): 222–271. 62. See The Annual Register for the Year 1787 (London: Unknown, 1788), 235–248; Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters, 185–189, 194–200; Robert Watson, The Life of Lord George Gordon (London: H. D. Symonds, 1795); Percy Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon (London: Robert Hale, 1937); David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewish Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 156–160; Marsha Keith Schuchard, “Lord George Gordon and Cabbalistic Freemasonaey: Beating Jacobite Sword into Jacobin Ploughshares,” in Secret Conversion to Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Martin Mulsow and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 183–231; Dominic Green, “George Gordon: A Biographical Reassessment,” in The George Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Ian Haywood and John Seed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 245–261; David Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 304–311; The Jew as Other: A Century of English Caricature, 1730–1830: An Exhibition (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1995), 47–52. The china vase with the caricature, Lord Gordon Riot made a Jew, is in the British Museum, London. 63. Moses Margoliouth, The History of the Jews in Great Britain, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1851), 122–124; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 308–309. 64. See Maciejko, Mixed Multitude, 232–248. 65. A Letter from Angel Lyon to the Right Honorable Lord George Gordon on Wearing Beards (London: Unknown, 1789); Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830, Tradition and Change in Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 122. 66. See Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon, 128–129, 276–277.

FIFTEEN

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FROM THE BOXING RING TO THE HALLS OF PARLIAMENT Confrontations and Initiatives for Regeneration and Citizenship

At the same time that Gordon was being sent to serve his sentence in Newgate in January 1788, English public opinion was following the first in a series of public boxing matches between Richard Humphreys and a young Jew from the Sephardi community of London, Daniel Mendoza (1764–1836), with bated breath. Following Humphreys’s victory, the Morning Herald wrote that nothing had attracted attention and excited the masses more than this contest. Not only had two excellent adversaries demonstrated their physical prowess and abilities, but Christianity and Judaism had confronted each other, and even people who had never thought about boxing at all showed interest in those who were said to be seeking a victory for their faith. The ancient religious rivalry was now put to a new test in the equal arena of sports, where Humphreys and Mendoza had fought with bare knuckles while two referees enforced the rules and declared the victor.1

“M en doz a For e v er!”: A Je w ish-Br itish Icon The London Annual Register, a chronicle of prominent events in 1788, reported that the enthusiasm of the masses was so great that neither the distance from London (the bout took place on January 9 in the village of Odiham) nor the cold weather deterred the multitudes from going there and buying tickets for half a guinea. Mendoza started off fighting with all his strength and with the determination of a man who wanted to win, and he maintained his advantage during the first six or seven rounds, but in the end, he fell and was injured. About twenty thousand pounds sterling of wagers passed from the Jews to the Christians, the gentiles. Though the Jew, Mendoza, was declared the loser,

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he had gained the sympathy of the crowd. He had fought with impressive nobility, the press declared, and he had given the spectators an admirable demonstration of the modern art of boxing. In a colored engraving entitled The Victory, Humphreys is depicted borne aloft by his fans, and on a flag waving in front of him is written, “Long Live Humphreys, The Victorious, Who in a Bloody Fight Overcame the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” However, it seems that the true victor was Mendoza, who is shown sitting on the earth, in pain and spitting blood; resembling Jesus removed from the cross, he is being cared for with compassion by a rabbi, who points to heaven, and by another Jew. Behind him appears none other than Lord Gordon, immersed in study of the Talmud. Both their faces are bearded, to remove all doubt regarding their Jewish identity. Articles, caricatures, and ballads, generally favoring Mendoza, told the curious audience what had taken place in the arena. The songs written about Gordon’s fate and his surprising conversion to Judaism competed with rhymes about the rivalry between Humphreys and Mendoza, “the Star of Jerusalem.” A ballad circulated in the streets of London after Mendoza’s victory in the second match (May 6, 1789) did use negative stereotypes about the Jews (Mendoza had “Moses’s nose”), but they mainly mocked “Dickie,” the “rival,” who boasted of his strength and was defeated at last, like Goliath, defeated by David. What a humiliation it was to lose to “the cursed little Jew from Duke Place.”2 Aside from the increased interest in sensational news, what kindled public opinion was indeed the physical battle between a Christian man and a Jew. Some people of the time compared the combat in the boxing ring to the theological confrontation in the arena of English public opinion between well-known scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), from Birmingham, and the most prominent spokesman of English Jewry, David Levi (1742–1801), waged at the same time in pamphlets. Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, was also the founder of the Unitarian Church. Beginning in 1787, he addressed the Jewish readership, encouraging them to join his church and assist in leading humanity to happiness. In Levi’s public responses, he completely rejected Priestley’s proposal and attacked him vehemently. Levi admitted that his boldness made the London Jewish community apprehensive, but he was unafraid and was confident of his own truth, which was based on his conviction that many more enlightened Christians had entirely abandoned the path of persecution. Levi regarded the dispute as a personal struggle and competition between the two. He wrote to Priestley on October 14, 1788, that he had not initiated the confrontation, nor had he aspired to win at first, but he joined in the battle to defend his beliefs, and public opinion would judge who emerged victorious.3

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Just as Levi’s replies to Priestley aroused respect among Christians, admiration of Mendoza as a hero because of his conduct and achievements in boxing countered the despised image of the Jews. Mendoza himself was aware of the historical role he played in England. Like the other ambitious and independent people of the eighteenth century, he wrote and published his autobiography to leave his own unique mark. He reports that his parents were of the Jewish faith, and he was sent to a Jewish school at a very early age, where he learned English and Hebrew. In his childhood, he got into many fights with the other children, and during his teens, when he was forced to earn a living as an assistant in vegetable, meat, and tea shops, he was already having his first fistfights in the violent alleys of London. One of his main motivations was to defend Jewish honor, and he got into fights with the butchers and others in the neighborhood because they insulted the proprietress of the shop where he worked, who was of the Jewish religion. His talents were recognized when he was sixteen, and he was invited to take part in his first prizefight. From this point on, Mendoza’s personal, proud voice is heard, telling how he stepped in the path of fame and attained exceptional public recognition. He fought in more than thirty bouts before large audiences, and in almost all of them, he overcame larger and stronger opponents. “I trust it will not be imputed to vanity if I allude to achievements of my own; but I cannot refrain from asking, was curiosity ever more ardently excited, or the general feeling of the nation ever more interested by any public exhibition, than by the contests between Mr. Humphreys and myself?” Beyond the desire for a personal victory, he also struggled for recognition of the virtues of boxing. At the age of only twenty-five, Mendoza published The Art of Boxing, which rejected the claim that it was merely a matter of vulgar and brutal brawling and arguing that it was an elegant sport that followed rules, was good for the health of body and mind, and demanded intelligence, rather than just power (the first principle was absolute control of balance and the ability to move quickly from side to side); it provided pleasure and entertainment, and it was especially worthy of every man whose duty was to defend himself. Aware that he was laying the foundations of modern masculine British identity, Mendoza declared that “Boxing is a national mode of combat, and is as peculiar to the inhabitants of his country as Fencing to the French.”4 No less than the art of boxing, Mendoza mastered the art of communications and repeatedly addressed public opinion to gain status and prestige. Even before writing his memoirs, he used to send letters to the daily press to connect the public at large with the boxing ring. His three matches with Humphreys were determining events in his life, and he did all he could to ensure his version of it would enter the pages of history. For example, he sent a letter to the editor

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of The World three days after his first bout to explain that in fact he had had the advantage throughout, but only an unexpected accident and sharp pain in his loins had made him fall and lose. A document signed by a physician was also published so there would not be a shred of doubt that in fact he had conceded victory. He promised never to disappoint the crowd or betray his supporters. Defending his reputation and preserving his self-esteem required a special effort, since Humphreys challenged him to a return bout, which he declined, saying his physical condition would not allow it. As noted, this exchanged took place on the pages of newspapers, but in the summer of 1788, about half a year after the first match, Humphreys showed up at the boxing academy that Mendoza had founded and accused him publicly of cowardice. Mendoza boiled with rage; there was no way of apologizing for that provocation, as Humphreys had insulted him in his academy. Ultimately, during the following two years, the two men met for further matches, which Mendoza won, becoming a champion admired by the masses. His fame was enormous. “Having now taken leave of the spectators, I quitted the scene in great triumph and hastened in company with some friends to meet a large party who were waiting for me at the Bell Inn. . . . As we were proceeding through the street . . . [the words] . . . Mendoza for ever was continually resounding in our ears.” Mendoza defeated Humphreys again in their final bout: “At length, the long disputed claims to superiority in the art of pugilism, between Mr. HUMPHREYS and myself, were, by this third and last contest, completely decided in my favour.”5 Mendoza’s self-image as a hero in public opinion was bolstered by newspaper articles, medallions, portraits, etchings, songs of praise, and even cups decorated with a picture of his fight with Humphreys, commemorating Mendoza and giving him the status of a British icon. The various negative stereotypes applied to him, such as “a second Shylock,” did not sway public opinion. On the contrary, those who saw the competition as a symbol of the Christian-Jewish confrontation realized that the agile, muscular Mendoza, who shattered his opponent’s body, contradicted the image of the cowardly, avaricious Jew, the peddler and financial speculator. Now, from the lexicon of the past, they drew up images like Judah, David, and the Maccabees. A ballad written in 1788 following the bout with Humphreys read: “Grim Jews and Christians pant alike for fame, / In faith still adverse, but in pride the same.”6 Mendoza’s acceptance in the culture of sports and on the pages of the press did indeed give him a high degree of equality. While he did raise a large Jewish family, he did not appear to be committed to religious observance; he competed on the Sabbath, was one of the Jews who shaved off their beards, and was condemned for his permissiveness by Lord Gordon and barred from visiting him

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in his cell. Mendoza’s autobiography sheds little light on his connection with Judaism. However, when his misfortunes began, beginning in the 1790s, after he retired from boxing, was burdened with debt, and sent to prison, he chose to make use of the most familiar English image to portray himself as the persecuted victim of his creditors, to gain the sympathy of his admirers: “Most of my readers have probably been present at the representation of SHAKSPEARE’S [sic] Merchant of Venice: have execrated the hard-hearted SHYLOCK, and commiserated the unfortunate ANTONIO: but here the scene was reversed; the Christian was the unfeeling persecutor—the Jew the unfortunate debtor.”7

Nay to H er e s y, Nay to Fa naticism, Nay to Cor ru ption: Lon don, Ber lin, V i lna The expressions of revulsion at Jews who violated the laws of the religion, which were voiced by the new Jew, Gordon, from his prison cell, were echoed by similar outcries and warnings from various places in the world in the late 1780s. While inner disputes had never been absent from the collective life of Jews, in these years, especially vehement conflicts arose, reflecting conflicting personal ambitions, intentional defiance, contempt for leaders and rabbis, contradictory visions of the future, and special concern for the unity of Jewish society. One of the most conspicuous rifts that opened during the eighteenth century peaked at that time in the consciousness of the people of the day. Moshe Tsevi, apparently an Ashkenazi immigrant, recorded his depressing and confusing encounter with the metropolis of London in a polemical pamphlet, published in 1789, entitled, A New World, that Is Called an Upside Down World, Named after the New and Opposite Actions . . . That Are Found and Seen in Our Times—another protest against religious permissiveness and skepticism. He wrote that the London Jewish community was torn in two, and he did not know whether it was possible to bridge the gap between the secular and the holy. Anyone whose costume and beard resembled those of a Jew “from the old world” received insults: “Every single day despicable and mocking words against the customs of our religion are spoken in my ears from their mouths.” His awareness of a historical change was especially sharp: “In earlier days all of Israel were accustomed to the absolute prohibition against walking four ells with a bare head . . . and now we raise our boys while they are still little, particularly to be bareheaded, and this is thought to be good manners in their eyes.” He understood that the people of the “new world” were a product of the freedom of the individual and critical thinking, and he feared the aggressive and destructive revolution: “The new heretics and skeptics and hypocrites, who have recently come, and

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our ancestors never imagined them, whom everyone calls the new world. They rise above us to destroy us and to revoke our holy and pure Torah, both written and oral, in several ways.” He wrote his pamphlet in pain and with a feeling of defeat: “Anyone whose heart was even touched by fear of God, in seeing all the aforementioned things, it is worthy and obligatory for him to mourn and lament the crisis and the great and enormous destruction that has ruined Israel, and truly they do not have the power to protest, because the break is extremely great.” Secularization in London had already isolated the “innocent,” the Jews of the “old world,” from those of “the new world” who seized upon the pleasures of the big city, and for those like him who were appalled, nothing remained but to recommend raising the walls between them.8 Although his protest was exaggerated and his awareness of the crisis was expressed too vehemently, A New World, that Is Called an Upside Down World was not an isolated voice of protest unique to London. Haym Salomon wrote from Philadelphia to his uncle in Poland, saying of America that “the nature of the land is such: very little Judaism,” and leaders of the Philadelphia community complained to their brethren in Amsterdam about the difficulty of coping with “the wicked who rebel against the Lord and our Torah.” In 1788, Rabbi HezkiahDeCordova (1720–1797), who served in Jamaica, wrote a book against “the modern philosophers who destroy all the foundations of faith and good morals,” whose influence on young people was already notable. In the wake of the integrationist trend of Emperor Joseph II’s policies, Abraham Trebitsch believed that “the religion is decreased and has lost its honor, by gradual diminution from time to time.” Moshe Hirschl of Breslau (1754–1823), an angry Jewish deist who addressed public opinion to complain about the persecution of “those who are free in their opinions,” stated that about a quarter of the Jews of Prussia were not “orthodox.” In his opinion, the rabbis “have brought us into a labyrinth of laws, customs, rituals, and baseless opinions, that make us unfit to be useful citizens.” Prussian publications reported on the integration of fashionable and permissive young Jews in the life of big cities. Thousands of people already belonged to the group of “free-thinking Germans,” and they were fundamentally different from “the sect of Poles or the strict adherents to their religion.” Except for members of the lower class in Berlin, painter Daniel Chodowiecki (1726–1801) wrote, the Jews were no longer “orthodox.” Beginning in the mid-1780s, rabbis and preachers were particularly sensitive to such reports, and, in their fear, they intensified their criticism and sharpened their picture of the crisis. “For human wickedness has increased in the land, and the skeptics of our day have multiplied,” said Rabbi Elazar Fleckeles (1754–1826) in a sermon given in the Maisel Synagogue of Prague.9

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The revolution of Jewish Enlightenment, which matured and peaked in the late 1780s, on the initiative of a few students and private tutors in Königsberg, was not intended to gather the clean-shaven and freethinkers together in the framework of a movement. The members of the Haskalah movement believed they were promoting a cultural renaissance that would in fact reconstitute the identity of all Jews. Its founders set the renewal of Hebrew as a primary goal, calling themselves the Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language, and their greatest achievement was publication of the periodical Hameasef. Naphtali Herz Wessely, Isaac Euchel, Elia Morpurgo, Shimon Ben Zechariah, Mendel Breslau, Aharon Wolfssohn, and others wanted to reform Jewish education and dreamed of a better future for their brethren in an improved age, where the suffering of exile would be ended by the dissemination of knowledge, rational thought, humanistic ethics, and the good will of the rulers of Europe. Nevertheless, Haskalah, too, was ultimately a factor in producing the inner rift. Their modern consciousness, their use of the lexicon of the Enlightenment, their critical spirit, and their offering of an alternative to the rabbinical elite in the form of authors, poets, educators, and publishers all exerted unsettling significance for generations. Mendelssohn’s fame increased in the last years of his life. He left a philosophical heritage that combined religious tolerance with condemnation of heresy. His Jerusalem attacked both those who plotted to fortify the bonds that stifled the voice of reason and advocated unacceptable religious rule and the atheists who did not fear God. In what sounds like his testament and an expression of his double fear, he wrote that a civil society must allow neither heresy nor fanaticism to strike root and spread, because “the body politic becomes sick and miserable, whether it is worn down by cancer or consumed by fever.”10 Mendelssohn’s sudden death at the age of fifty-six (January 4, 1786) aroused a wave of responses and established his figure as the icon of the modern Jew. The very first item published at the head of the Shevat 5546 (1786) edition of Hameasef portrayed him as a secular redeemer, building the liberal story of the modern age in Jewish history around him: “Moses is the man who raised us up out of the pit of mire, the depths of ignorance, to the high place of wisdom and knowledge.” Like Mendoza the Jew in England, Mendelssohn, called the “Jewish Luther” by his Christian eulogists, was a prominent Jew in German public opinion during the 1780s. News of his death touched many hearts and crossed ethnic and religious boundaries, as Euchel emphasized in his biography of Mendelssohn: “There was mourning and lamentation among everyone, the Jew and his counterpart among the nations.”11 His friends began to sponsor erection of a monument in the center of the city. The initiative failed, but, as

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Richard Cohen explains, the significance of the project, linking Mendelssohn to Leibniz and others, would have given legitimacy to the Jewish body, bearded and circumcised, in the cultural and physical landscape of Berlin, decreasing the marginality of the Jews in general society.12 The peak of public mourning was reached in three memorial assemblies, public concerts in Berlin and Königsberg, where vocalists, a chorus, and an orchestra performed the cantata Sulamit und Eusebia. The Deutsche Zeitung, reporting about the events in the concert hall in the performance in Königsberg on May 9, 1787, noted, “This assembly was the best attended and most splendid” that the reporter had ever seen. It was a demonstration of tolerance that would illuminate the future of humanity. Notables of the city were in attendance, including Immanuel Kant. The poet Karl Wilhelm Ramler (1725–1798) wrote the libretto, and Karl Bernard Wessely (1768–1826), the nephew of the author of Divrei shalom veemet, composed the music. The authors and performers of Sulamit und Eusebia sought to present the dialogue with culture beyond the boundaries of Judaism, which Mendelssohn had maintained during his life. A duet sung by two Jewish singers pointed out that this was a common loss to everyone: “Wisdom, resourcefulness, and compassion dwelled together; the son of Menachem has left us, he has perished, alas.”13 The initiative for the splendid memorial ceremony in Königsberg came on the part of the heads of the Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language, which just then, toward the end of 1788, had rebranded itself, in hopes of expanding into an international movement and increasing its influence. The German newspaper that reported about the ceremony also informed its readers that henceforth its name would be Gesellschaft des Guten und Edlen (Society for the Promotion of the Good and the Noble), and it would be directed at members “of the Jewish nation” in the big cities of Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, and even Poland. The number of its activists had increased, and it was hoped that in the future it would bring about a blessed change for the better.14 Without a doubt, the young movement was gathering strength. Under Isaac Euchel’s direction, with the support of wealthy families such as the Friedländers, Itzigs, Eskeleses, and Arnsteins and by means of a network of agents who represented the society in the cities of Germany as well as in Metz, Nancy, Vienna, Prague, London, Copenhagen, and Lublin, the Maskilim demonstrated their presence and self-assurance. They depended on several cultural assets, the first being the Freischule, which was regarded as the height of the initiative for educational reform in Berlin, attracting much attention in public opinion. They also relied on the publishing house, which was opened near the school in 1784

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and was administered by the leaders of the Haskalah. Hameasef opened windows to science and ancient history for its readers, providing a platform for translated and original poetry, and announced and reviewed new books. It also planted an explosive charge in the pages of its monthly editions by portraying a vision of the future that conflicted with the accepted values of Jewish society. For example, when Shimon Ben Zechariah transported ideas from Rousseau’s Emile into Hebrew culture, he offered good methods for educating children to parents and educators, like playing games and walking outdoors, bathing in cold water at least twice a week, and opening windows wide. Advocacy of natural education in Hameasef offered a cultural alternative to the traditional house of study. In a subversive sentence, which warns against its psychological consequences, he even called for combating the ethos of Torah study: “Let them take care not to weaken their lovely brains with hair-splitting and homilies that are not decent for their tender minds. . . . Every manner of illness and afflictions will infect them because of too much sitting from dawn until late at night, and the nuisance of imbibing difficult logic-chopping, and, even more, the disease of fear will weary them, worry, and sadness that is called hypochondria . . . in these calamities they lose their brains and darken the light of the joy of their heart.”15 The editions of Hameasef for 1787–1789 offer many examples of friction between the two elites, as the competition between them became visible to all eyes. Immediately after Herz Homberg (1749–1841), a native of Bohemia and a former student of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, a private tutor in the Mendelssohn home and a contributor to the project of “The Biur,” was appointed as inspector of the new schools in Galicia and made responsible for implementing Joseph II’s policy, he published an appeal to the rabbinical elite. As a government representative, he demanded cooperation in establishing a network of German-Jewish schools. And, as a “pedagogue” (as he defined himself), he did not conceal his distaste for traditional education, attacking those who opposed all reform. New things would always be regarded as evil in the eyes of the foolish masses, who do not understand the benefit conferred to the Jews by the emperor. Hameasef also called attention to renewal of the dispute about the governmental demand to delay burial, this time in Bohemia. Rabbi Landau’s opposition was countered by physician and philosopher Marcus Herz, of Berlin, who exerted his full authority as a spokesman for science. In a special article, which was included as an appendix in Hameasef, he explained the uncertainty in determining death and, with a sense of superiority, he attacked the ignorance of the rabbis, “the foolish and stupid men, whose spirit is more haughty than their knowledge, and they are quarrelsome. In their absence of knowledge they

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judge any science that is not contained in the Talmud to be poured onto the earth like water. They call the knowledge of others rotten meat and a criminal offense, causing people to sin, and what they do not know and do not understand is ridiculous in their eyes.” He assigned the goal and mission of combating the distorted interpretation of Judaism to the fellowship of Maskilim as a means “to benefit your nation and to pave the path of happiness and success for them.” Shaul Levin strongly challenge the scholarly reputation of Rabbi Raphael Cohen of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek. In 1789, he published Mitspe yoqtael in the Freischule printing house in opposition to Cohen, criticizing the latter’s book of Halakha, Mitspe yequtiel. This affair was also publicized in the German press as another example of the split in Jewish society. A war of proclamations and excommunications was waged in vehement language, expressing the powerful emotions that roiled on both sides of the cultural boundary. In Altona, the author of Mitspe yoqtael was called a blasphemer who dared “to mock a wise scholar,” arousing terror, and publication of the book was no less than “a disaster, a catastrophe, a day of darkness and gloom.” Meanwhile, in Berlin, Levin himself and his colleagues attacked religious zealotry, claiming that their purpose was to encourage public and deep dispute to clarify the truth, because it was no longer conceivable that the rabbinical elite should be immune from criticism.16 With Levin’s radical criticism of Rabbi Raphael Cohen, this uprising reached its peak. In a challenge directed against the rabbis of the central communities in Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Prague, Posnan, and others), the directors of the publishing house associated with the Freischule sent them copies of Mitspe yoqtael to let them determine whether the criticism was justified. Would they be brave and honest enough to condemn the “nonsense” found abundantly in the Torah library? Or would they close ranks and offer backing to the rabbi who was the flesh of their flesh? Would they do their duty and acknowledge “that we have declined wondrously, and the shepherds of Israel haven’t the heart to stand in the breech”?17 The Maskilim of Berlin particularly addressed “the famous and pious scholar, our rabbi and teacher Elijah of Vilna.” This was testimony to the status of the Vilna Gaon, even in the Prussian capital, and it also asserted the surprising connection of the confrontation between Haskalah and the benighted tradition in Western Europe to the parallel confrontation in Eastern Europe, the prolonged dispute between Hasidim and Mitnagdim. A hint that information about Hasidism had filtered into Germany can be found in a letter sent by Solomon Dubno from his travels in Poland and Lithuania to his friend, learned printer and scholar of the Hebrew language, Wolf Heidenheim (1757–1832) of Offenbach. He described the excessive self-confidence of

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the Hasidim and decried “those who are used to regard their rabbis, whom they call zaddikim, as pious holy men.” He condemned the movement, whose ranks were full of drunkards and men who boasted of conversing with the Shekhina (the Divine Presence).18 In that conflict, with the inspiration of the Vilna Gaon, efforts continued to restrict the influence of the Hasidism. In the summer of 1784, the heads of the Vilna community sent a letter to Pinsk complaining that they had not discharged Levi Yitsh.aq, the rabbi of that community, who was known to be a Hasidic leader. Even after the balance of power in the Pinsk community changed and pressure from Vilna increased, they were in no rush to respond to the demand to remove the rabbi, excusing their delay with the excuse that he might “return from his erroneous path.” The Mitnagdim were very frustrated and lost patience. It was insufferable for a stronghold of Hasidism to exist among them, and they demanded the rabbi’s immediate dismissal: “Remove the crown from the aforementioned rabbi and head of your religious court, so that he may not instruct or judge, and remove the staff of government and the scepter of power from him, may he be completely driven out.” At first they ignored this blunt demand to discharge their rabbi, but in 1785, they submitted to the authority of the Vilna Gaon, perhaps because of the weakness of the Hasidic camp, and Rabbi Yitsh.aq abandoned his position in Pinsk and assumed the rabbinate of Berdyczow in the Ukraine.19 We cannot know how Rabbi Yitsh.aq felt after he was expelled because of his Hasidic identity. However, something of what was on the minds of Hasidic leaders in response to the opposition can be heard in the voice of Rabbi Elimelech of Leżajsk, another disciple of the maggid of Międzyrzec. Rabbi Elimelech was one of the most prominent and influential of the zaddikim in the generation when Hasidism was consolidated as a movement. When a question was addressed to the court he established in Galicia, seeking to understand the meaning of the opposition (“regarding the dispute that arose for our many sins about this eminent, pious, and famous rabbi [Yitsh.aq]”), Rabbi Elimelch had his son El’azar answer in a consoling letter. The challenge of the Mitnagdim against “the servants of the Lord” was a trial whose purpose was to strengthen them in their righteousness and enable them to ascend to higher levels. In any case, the conflict was just one link in the chain of disputes with zaddikim since Abraham and Moses in the Bible and “the days of the holy ARI of blessed memory, for they also used to combat against him.”20 The rivals of the Hasidim became increasingly apprehensive about the innovation that undermined the existing order. The penetration of Hasidic cells to western Galicia by means of separate prayer quorums also incensed the

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community of Cracow. Rabbi Levi Yitsh.aq of Berdyczow and prominent scholars and lay leaders protested: Was it permissible to change traditional ways, particularly in this venerable community, which drew its character and customs from those “who are buried under clumps of earth, the holy men of God, eternal scholars,” headed by the Cracow’s main source of authority and pride, Rabbi Moses Isserles (1530–1572), known as the REMA? In the proclamation of excommunication signed in the autumn of 1785, they condemned the effrontery of the young men, “recent arrivals” who were contemptuous of the study of the Talmud and preferred ecstatic, wild prayer, thereby rebelling irresponsibly against the tradition and the establishment and subverting the fundamental ethos of the society (“thereby the Torah will wither, and its foundations will tumble”). Under threat of excommunication, the proclamation admonished those who took part in Hasidic separatism, “that no one may raise his hand among the members of our community to form a prayer quorum for himself so as to pray with strange movements, with whistling by the lips, and by striking hand against hand.”21 About a year later, the communities of Mogilev and Shklow in White Russia also issued harsh proclamations mocking the Hasidim and calling for “supervising and examining properly what to do to save Jewish souls from this cult and to keep them away from ugliness.” Condemning the blasphemous Hasidim, the proclamation declared that the doctrine of Hasidism, which was now found in printed books, confirms “that their entire goal is to uproot and pluck out the faith of Israel, perish the thought.” The regulations for all the communities of White Russia, which were drafted at a special assembly in Shklow (January 1, 1787), included a series of steps (the elimination of prayer quorums, prohibitions against appointing religious functionaries from their fellowship and against reading their books) toward exclusion of Hasidism as a deviant sect of “empty and reckless” people.22 The most prominent of the zaddikim who came forward to defend the Hasidic movement and attack the slanderers who called for its abolition was Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi. He had just overcome his domestic opponents and been anointed by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Abraham of Kalisk as the zaddik who would lead the Hasidim of White Russia. Fearing the consequences of Katherine’s policy of reform, they assigned him the mission of defending against the penetration of the state and the surrounding culture (“the main thing is to distance them very far from the manners of the goyim and from their laws, lest they be polluted by all those things”) and to make sure they did not cross the line that sharply distinguished between “the sanctity of the excellence of Israel and the nations and their manners.” A task no less urgent was to reinforce the confidence of the Hasidim, who were threatened

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by proclamations and excommunication. In an angry letter to the community of Mogilev, which had apparently summoned him to appear before it and bear responsibility for rebellion against the tradition, Shneur Zalman rejected the severe steps that had been taken against the Hasidim and refused to take part in what he saw as a one-sided kangaroo court, where he would be presented as “one of the empty men, the rebels, and criminals.” With malice and false accusations, the Mitnagdim persecuted him, though he was innocent, “and they pass judgment against us as epikorsim [heretics] in their own opinion.” Challenging the superiority of the Vilna Gaon, Shneur Zalman argued that there was no reason to rely on that man, “unique in his generation,” because the entire Hasidic camp stands against him as a group whose authority was preferable: “The individual does not overcome the many, the colleagues and disciples of the holy rabbi, preacher of righteousness, the master and teacher, Dov Ber, may he rest in peace, of Międzyrzec.” This was one of the first times that a Hasidic zaddik both defined the identity of the new movement precisely and presented it as being in opposition to the camp headed by the Vilna Gaon. With the same self-confident consciousness, Shneur Zalman countered the criticism of the Mitnagdim by calling on them to choose a time and place for a public dispute in which impartial men would judge “prominent men of the land . . . men with knowledge and understanding.” Just as the Maskilim of Berlin issued a challenge to the senior rabbis to contend before public opinion and evaluate the erudition of Rabbi Raphael Cohen, Shneur Zalman also sought to transfer the dispute from the arena of proclamations of excommunication to the decision of a public tribunal in which the two parties would have an equal opportunity to express their opinion. In such circumstances, he had no doubt he would come out ahead and that the truth would triumph: “Glowing like light shall be our justice and our verdict shall be as the noon, and there will be the repose of peace and quiet, and there will be no more division among those who cling to the Lord our God.”23 For this religious leader, who, as we have seen, was very sensitive to political developments and capable of identifying revolutionary trends, the dispute was a rift whose significance must not be underestimated. “The great tumult in our country is known, and it is a time of distress for Jacob, and he will be delivered from it,” Shneur Zalman said to his Hasidim, guiding them as to how to act “against those who rise up against you because you pray in a special quorum.” Acknowledging the balance of forces that worked against the Hasidim, he recommended avoiding confrontation as much as possible.24 What appeared to be “the great tumult” took place at the same time as a deep dispute that was tearing apart the Vilna community. Even the man who

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had been the source of inspiration in the struggle against the Hasidim and who himself was renowned for his piety and erudition of the first order was not immune to the sharp arrows fired in every direction during the passionate and urgent battle that broke out there once again. A schoolteacher named Yoel Spektor, from the lowest ranks of Jewish society, was put in the stocks and imprisoned because he had protested against the Vilna Gaon, saying that the community supported him as a parasite and that he ate from the public treasury without contributing a thing. Following this, Rabbi Yitsh.aq Ben Leib, a leader of the protest against the community leadership, lodged a complaint with the government authorities on May 29, 1786, in which he accused the Vilna Gaon of “extorting no small sums from the masses . . . with the influence he acquired for himself he forces [the community] to pursue and excommunicate people who oppose him, with an unjustified expense in taxes for the holy man.” This radical challenge on the part of “the masses” against the Vilna Gaon’s leadership revealed the intensity of the bitterness against him among members of the community with which he was so much identified. It was another episode in the prolonged dispute between Rabbi Shmuel Ben Avigdor and the Kahal, the community’s board of directors, which was supported by the Vilna Gaon. As noted, the dispute originated with the rabbi’s appointment. It broke out again in 1785 and raged for about six years, fraught with furious events. In one of the harsh and distressing moments of the dispute, on January 6, 1785, three wardens sent by the lay leaders came to the rabbi’s home to notify him that he had been dismissed. One of the three, Rabbi H.aim, told him, with hesitation, “The head of the Kahal has ordered us to discharge you from the rabbinate of the community of Vilna, starting from today.” The rabbi, who continued to struggle against his enemies almost until his dying day, was not deterred. He declared that he did not recognize that decision. The wording of the resolution that had been issued against him shook the foundations of his position: “Because of the great thievery and injustice committed by his honor the rabbi and scholar our master Shmuel head of the rabbinical court in our community . . . for the aforementioned scholar, not only is it enough that he rules over us against the law of our holy Torah . . . for it appears patently that all his ways are crooked and despicable, and there has never been someone as worthless as he.” The Kahal claimed that copious testimony against him painted a black picture of deep corruption, misappropriation of the public treasury, miscarriage of justice, acceptance of bribes, and even contempt for the commandments. Even when he oversaw meetings of the court, some of the judges complained, the odor of alcohol always arose from him. The rabbi’s supporters among the masses, various tradesmen, countered by accusing the Kahal, which was persecuting him,

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of corruption. Dismissal of the rabbi, which ultimately was confirmed by the royal court in Warsaw, failed to put an end to the affair. But the tension did not fade away, and the dispute continued with lawsuits and complaints, with the intervention of committees and courts, with excommunications, pamphlets, squabbles in the synagogue and on the street, with articles in the Polish press, and with countless threats.25 Calm was restored only near the time of the controversial rabbi’s death. The wound left by the conflict never healed, and Rabbi Avigdor was the last head of the rabbinical court of Vilna, for no successor was ever appointed. A community tradition has it that a stone was placed on his seat in the synagogue to signal that the post would never be filled again. A revolutionary spirit wafted from this hot and bitter dispute. Simon Ben Wolf, a leader in the struggle of the masses in Vilna against the Kahal, was arrested in May 1788 with four other activists and sent to prison in difficult conditions in the Nesvizh fortress. He was thirty-three years old, the father of a young family, a member of the Jewish social elite, and a businessman who had undergone Polish acculturation and thus was very familiar with the wide-ranging official legal system. He identified with the opponents of Hasidism. Like his contemporary, Lord Gordon, Wolf also used his time in prison as an opportunity to consolidate has political positions. With great fury against those who had embittered his life and taken his freedom (“without feeling ourselves guilty of any sin other than that of having a lawsuit with the Kahal in Vilna”), in 1789, he composed a radical appeal in Polish directed to the Great Sejm in Warsaw and advocating dismantling the Kahal. Seven years after Mendelssohn demanded reduction of the coercive power of the community, the prisoner of Nesvizh proposed that the Polish authorities should deprive their leaders almost entirely of their authorities. He argued that the lives of the Jews would be improved without “civil rule.” In light of their arbitrary conduct, extortion, conflict of interest, and corruption, the communal leaders only did harm. Hence, “there was no need for any head of the Kahal or communal court.” Unaware that in France, the fire of revolution had already been kindled and discussion of the status of the Jews had begun, he warned against the contradiction of the principles of the centralized state inherent in the existence of “a state within the state.” Bound in chains, beaten, starved, and tormented in forced labor for more than a year and a half, Wolf begged for justice and hoped that his case would hasten comprehensive reform. “We have neither freedom nor security,” he argued in the name of liberal values, “at the same time as general enlightenment argues for humanity everywhere.” Like Dohm, Mendelssohn, Joseph II, and several spokesmen for the French Revolution, Wolf believed that the Jews were the touchstone for modern policy: “The

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high Sejm, which, with wisdom, plans a better fate in the future for everyone, will not want to leave our Jewish people in the condition of its former disorder.” In the outline of the reform he proposed, Wolf stated: “Their religion must be left to the Jews themselves, but their citizenship must be placed under the laws of the state.” The state will grant “a certain status of citizenship,” the authority of the rabbis will be decreased, and they will be denied the right of excommunication. In the end, this proposal, like others by Jews that reached the Great Sejm, went entirely unheeded. It would appear that Wolf ’s emotional appeal was voiced in a vacuum; however, at this stage in the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century, in parallel with the events of the French Revolution, his plan was an expression of liberty and the yearning to make a deep change among the Jews. The document written by the young man from Vilna demonstrated involvement in Polish and Jewish political discourse; it imbibed the ethos of the Enlightenment (striving for happiness, humanism, and tolerance as general obligations inherent in the expectation of “less superstition” and the curing of “savagery”), and it identified with the state (“my devotion to the land where I was born and raised”). From his prison cell, Wolf expressed what he himself called “my voice,” a voice of protest and criticism that demanded liberation from the yoke of communal rule. “Separation of citizenship from religion is not so difficult,” he asserted, and his vision also offered advantages to Poland: “The Sejm that is meeting now will acquire fame by making the Jewish people both a happier nation and also one more useful to the state.”26

“On th e Ph ysica l a n d Mor a l R egener ation of th e Je ws” Echoing the great expectation for dramatic change in the fate of the Jews, a unique pamphlet was published in 1787: an open letter to the president of the United States from a German Jew. The writer suggested that the solution to the severe misery of the majority of the Jews in Germany, who did not belong to the elite of commerce and high culture, was Jewish settlement in the thirteen colonies of North America. In Germany, under the pressure of restrictions, taxes, and humiliations, the situation was unbearable, and emigration to the new land would make possible a new and improved life. This anonymous appeal to the president of the Continental Congress had actually appeared four years earlier, a direct extension of the discussion of the naturalization and moral rehabilitation of the Jews, which Dohm had initiated. A non-Jewish proponent of the Enlightenment could well be concealed behind this “German Jew,” someone who, with this fictional letter, wished to call attention to the shameful

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living conditions of the Jewish minority. Like Wolf, he used the Enlightenment lexicon to address the authorities, presenting the Jews as a test case for actual implementation of humanist principles. Christian “lovers of humanity” were now debating the Jewish question in the light of the doctrine of toleration. Many of them “desire a general revolution in our lives and our ways of thinking,” this German Jew explained, but such a revolution “cannot be made by anyone except your honor, most gracious president, by proposing, with your beneficence, this request to the exalted Congress, which, if it is fulfilled, will be for the glory of humanity.”27 America, across the Atlantic, fired the imagination of those who sought ways to rehabilitate the Jews and also to restore them to life as an improved nation. In Europe during the late 1780s, they sought to increase sensitivity in public opinion to injustice and segregation and highlight the growing self-assurance of Jews, who demanded the abolition of restrictions and discrimination. For example, on February 28, 1787, seven wealthy members of the Frankfurt community, including Anschel Rothschild (1744–1812), addressed a petition to the city council, stating that the harassing of Jews at the gates to the city was no longer acceptable. In this day and age, there was no place for prejudice and arbitrary conduct, because Jews, too, had “the same rights as all people, whoever they are, and the full right to demand protection from the sovereign.” With the same feeling of shame that nourished toleration, the producers of The Merchant of Venice in the national theater of Berlin in August 1788 added a short prologue. An actor came on stage first and apologized: In our day, he said, the despicable figure of Shylock so much contradicted the figure of members of the sage Mendelssohn’s religion that it was important and imperative to declare that the play also presented wicked Christians and criticized tyranny and evil. In no way do we intend to distress people whom we admire, and certainly not to “provide further encouragement to the ancient and unjustified hatred.” The balance had then tilted so far toward correcting prejudices that complaints were heard from the audience that the Jews were now entirely immune from criticism.28 A competition sponsored by the Royal Society of Sciences and Arts of Metz in 1785 added another dimension of the discussion of Jews in the public sphere by asking if there were ways to make the Jews into happier and more useful citizens of France. Within two years, nine treatises were submitted in response to the question. Just two of the entries were negative; one notable of the city of Metz feared competition for livelihood so much that he advocated banishing the Jews of France to French Guinea, in West Africa, and a Benedictine monk demanded maintaining the dominance of Christianity. The other authors all agreed that rehabilitation of the Jews and their integration in the state after

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completion of the project of reform was both possible and justified. They had internalized what Richard Cohen has called the “reformist lexicon,” and they identified with the encounter between humanism and the interests of the state (happiness and usefulness), as formulated with great clarity in the question posed by the competition. Jurist Claude Antoine Capon de Château-Thierry (1722–1793) believed that it was possible to dispel the tension between the negative image of the forty thousand Jews in the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and the vision of liberating them from restrictions. He pointed toward the enlightened Jewish communities of Berlin and Vienna to prove that the change was possible. The most influential and prominent of the contest winners was Henri JeanBaptiste Grégoire (1750–1831), whose treatise, Essay on the Physical and Moral Regeneration of the Jews, was published in 1789. Mixed into the Abbé Grégoire’s vision of “regeneration” was a good bit of Christian messianic expectation for a new birth of the Jews, but most of the chapters of the treatise set out practical channels for rehabilitation (trades, agriculture, schools, law, army), which would lead to their naturalization. Continuing from Tolland, at the beginning of the century, and Montesquieu, at midcentury, Grégoire displayed a picture of Jewish history to his readers (“The Jews are persecuted with fury and massacred without pity. One could stuff volumes in telling the cruelties of this nature by which peoples have soiled their history”) in order to demand a spiritual accounting and true reparation. Like Dohm, he conceded that the Jews’ flawed morality might create problems, but it should be recalled that their bad qualities were the product of historical circumstances of constant oppression. “The wrongs done to the Jews, their misfortunes, accuse our behavior toward them. Nations, admit while moaning that it is your doing! The Jews produced the effects, you were the ones who made the causes; who is more guilty?” In an almost exact quotation from Nathan the Wise, Grégoire took the principle of humanism as the basis of any discussion: “For a long time people have been repeating that they are men like us, they are that before they are Jews.” Replying to skeptics like Michaelis, who doubted the Jews’ loyalty to their homeland, he argued that when new conditions benefited the Jews, they would also become patriotic. To that end, in his opinion, community autonomy and the authority of the rabbis should be decreased, and the Jews should be made subject to the various frameworks of the state. “A new age is dawning,” Grégoire stated. His conclusion reflected the awareness of the people of the eighteenth century that they were living in an age bursting with the possibility for change: “May the palm fronds of humanity ornament the frontispiece, and may posterity applaud the union of our hearts in advance. The Jews are members of this universal

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family which must establish fraternity among all peoples, and upon them as upon us, revelation extends its majestic veil. Children of the same father, remove every pretext of aversion for your brothers, who one day will be united in the same home.”29 Christian expectations combined with the humanistic vision, and the hoped-for turnaround in the fate of the Jews was presented once again as a test case in the historical reckoning demanded of the peoples of Europe. “It is essential to rehabilitate this people,” declared Grégoire, and he was not deterred from using rather violent language in describing the task: “We must seize the generation that was just born.” Ronald Schechter correctly observed that Grégoire was prepared to use any means, even coercion and punishment, in the framework of the heroic project of regeneration. He took into consideration that there would be those who refused regeneration, and, as a result of the dramatic move, the society would split, and “we will first have two kinds of Jews, the first kind, devoted to ignorance, and crouching in the mud of prejudice, and the second, rising to the height of their century and soaring above errors.” In the end, the first kind would not be able to resist the pressure exerted on it, and it would surrender. Before publishing the essay, Grégoire sent a letter to his Jewish Friend, Simon Geldern, in which he examined the possible conflict between the laws of the state and Halakha in the area of personal status. He did not conceal his pride that his essay had won the prize of the royal academy. He received information about the split in Jewish society from Moses Ensheim (1750–1839) from Metz, who was a member of the Haskalah movement, and in the margins of the essay, Grégoire also noted that the Maskilim, who had organized around Hameasef, were the modernist vanguard that would support regeneration, despite opposition from within: “They will assist the regeneration of their people; this is possibly the dawn of a beautiful day.” Grégoire received even more important assistance from his close friend, the translator of Mendelssohn’s Phaedon into French, Isaiah Berr Bing (1759–1805). Bing’s comments certainly influenced Grégoire’s essay. He expressed indignation and disappointment, saying that he didn’t know whether in this philosophical century people still believed in the prejudices against the Jews; however, he was aware that Jews still felt their consequences as they had in the past.30 Zalkind Hourwitz, a Polish Jew, as he defined himself, was born in a village near Lublin. He won third prize in the Metz essay contest. Like Solomon Maimon, he, too, crossed the border and set out for Berlin on a journey of cultural conversion before going to study in the yeshiva of Metz. From there, at the age of twenty-three, he went to Paris, where he worked as a translator in the royal library and was one of a group of about seven hundred Jews who lived

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in the capital of France. In his essay, Apology for the Jews, (April 3, 1789), he assured his readers that the religion would not be an obstacle to naturalization. Very much like Simon Ben Wolf, his contemporary in Lithuania, he went out of his way to separate the laws of religion from duties to the state. Hourwitz went farther in his critique of the Talmud and the rabbinical leadership. It was an error to learn about the Jews from religious texts, because in our day, he said, religion has almost no influence on what the Jews do. His plan for reform was consistent with that of the other winners of the competition, Grégoire and Protestant lawyer Thierry. He too expected the state to use its power to implement reform. Something of his personal situation as a Jew living outside community and religious frameworks can be heard in his proposal to limit the authority of the rabbis and to defend Jews who seek freedom from the norms of the religion. “To better facilitate these bonds,” he said, “their rabbis and leaders must be severely forbidden from claiming the least authority over their co-religionists outside of the synagogue, from prohibiting entry and honors to those who cut their beards, who curl their hair, who dress like Christians, who go to the theater, or who fail to observe some other custom.” In this demand of the state to defend Jews who had undergone secularization, Zalkind again revealed one of the inner crises affecting the Jews. Hourwitz, as his biographer Frances Malino emphasizes, was an individualist political activist who struggled to introduce meaning into the historical moment when everything was being reevaluated. His essay touched one of the sensitive nerves of the new political discourse: How could one preserve the delicate balance between the right to be equal and freedom to be different?31 Parallel with the address to public opinion, the state sponsored discussions of the Jewish question in a committee headed by liberal minister GuillaumeChrétien de Malesherbes (1721–1794) for the purpose of introducing reform. Neither the Malesherbes committee nor the essay competition in Metz produced concrete results. However, within a few months of that critical year, the conversation was to pass into the new arena of the revolutionary congress, and many of the arguments and the visions for the future conveyed by these essays echoed in the words of the delegates to the National Assembly during the discussions in preparation for the law of emancipation of the Jews of France. In these turbulent years, in the feverish search for rational solutions to urgent problems, the question of the Jewish minority was placed time after time on the political agenda of several countries in Europe. Just a little more than a decade had passed since the communities of White Russia came under Russia rule, and it appeared that the instruction to include the Jews in the general classes of merchants or burghers was already seen by the Jewish leadership as

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a right to be well guarded. When an imperial agent prohibited residence in villages or the distillation of alcohol and the leasing of taverns, and when, for example, officials did not enforce the Jews’ right to participate in elections, a delegation from the districts of Mogilev and Plotsk organized and lodged a petition with Katherine II, requesting her intervention. Upon explicit instructions from Katherine to preserve the equality of the Jewish minority, on May 7, 1786, the Senate passed the edict for the Defense of the Rights of the Jews of Russia. It is probably no exaggeration to call this document an early form of emancipation, at least declaratively, as it did not provide citizenship but rather equal legal status to that of Christians in the same socioeconomic group. “Since, on the basis of the instructions of her highness, members of the Jewish faith have already received status equal to others,” the edict declared, “it must be insisted upon that in every manifestation of the government, the Jews will be allowed to enjoy the advantages and rights they deserve according to their profession and wealth, with no distinction of origin and religion.” Expulsion from the villages was annulled, and discrimination was prohibited. However, to avoid angering the local Christian populace, these instructions were not translated into action, and the gap between the declaration in Saint Petersburg and life in White Russia remained great.32 The reformist Sejm in Warsaw, to which Simon Ben Wolf had called for help, also considered proposals to remove the Jews from the business of alcoholic beverages as an urgent protection measure for the peasants, who suffered from serious and debilitating alcoholism, and as a step toward integrating the Jews in the state as useful citizens. Pamphlets expressed hostility to the Jews in relation to these proposals: “In the state and in business, the Jews are the rulers. . . . They destroy people and impoverish the serfs. They are harmful to every class. . . . Hang a hundred Jews every year.” Others argued that the Jews had been forced into this business against their will and that the Szlachta was to blame. For example, a member of the Polish parliament, Matheus Butrymowicz (1745–1814), wrote in a pamphlet: “The Jew steals the last crust of bread from the hungry peasant, but he mustn’t be blamed for that. We have only allowed him that way of life, and even demand payment from him for it.”33 Austrian policy toward the quarter of a million Jews of Galicia was consolidated in a series of frequent directives issued from Vienna. As if Joseph II knew that his days were numbered, he made every effort, sometimes against the advice of senior officials, to impose his worldview. Toward the end of the 1780s, his policy, which Michael Silber has called “social engineering,” became far more radical; it was both liberal and liberating and intervening and coercive. Community autonomy and the judicial authority of the rabbis were abolished

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(May 27, 1785). Proof of knowledge of German in a school certificate became a condition for Talmud study and for obtaining a marriage license. Dozens of German-Jewish schools were opened alongside the traditional schools and private tutors. Burial before two days after death was forbidden (July 3, 1786). It became obligatory to choose a family name (July 23, 1787), and wearing a costume that distinguished and segregated Jews was forbidden (1788). Starting in 1786, several agricultural settlements, such as New Babylon near Bolechow, were established for Jews in Galicia. All these directives ultimately were gathered in a single document: Joseph II’s edict of tolerance for the Jews of Galicia (May 7, 1789). Taking a general view of the development of Jewish legislation in eighteenth-century Europe, this edict emerges as exceptionally advanced, going far beyond any previous document. The prologue to the edict declared that it was consistent with the accepted principles of tolerance and also a contribution to the general welfare to abolish the differences that heretofore existed in legislation between Christian and Jewish subjects. Henceforth the Jews of Galicia were to be regarded exactly like the other subjects with respect to both rights and obligations. The sixtyfour articles of the edict stated directives that had already been issued, such as the obligation to learn German, conditions for a marriage license, restrictions of rabbinical authority (absolute prohibition against excommunication), integration into the general administrative system (“every Jewish resident, as a subject, belongs to the local authority”), and, as in White Russia and Poland, restrictions on residence in villages and on the distillation and sale of alcohol in taverns. That which Wolf expected to happen in Poland became obligatory law in Galicia. The Jewish collective was in effect defined as only a religious guild. It appears that Mendelssohn’s struggle against religious coercion, from within and from the outside, had been confirmed by the state in this final legislation of Joseph II. Even if it was only “conditional emancipation,” and even if in fact the Austrian authorities found it difficult to implement the edict, it became an example for legislators elsewhere. The Maskilic elite greeted it enthusiastically (the full text was published in the German supplement of Hameasef), and, in Silber’s words, it indeed “represented the furthest point to which enlightened absolutism could move toward Jewish equality within the context of a feudal society of legally differentiated orders.”34 Within this great wave of proposals and directives for the regeneration of the Jews initiated by the modern state, one may single out one law that concentrated all the far-reaching expectations for a dramatic change as well as the great fear that the familiar frameworks of life would collapse: the military conscription law. The process of its legislation as well as the disputes and reactions

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to it brought together some of the central arguments that arose in public and political debate on reform of the Jews in the 1780s—especially the goal of making them into productive citizens, proving their patriotism, and integrating them as citizens with rights and duties. Joseph II, who was the first European ruler to require military service of the Jews, was quite aware of the meaning of this step, and he determined that the Jew, as a man and a citizen, was obligated to serve like everyone else. In mid-February 1788, he ordered the conscription of the Jews of Galicia for transport missions, and two months later, he extended conscription to Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary. In the following summer, during the war of Austria against Turkey, about 2,500 Jewish soldiers were already serving in the imperial army.35 The Jewish public was surprised by Joseph II’s tight embrace, and outcries of apprehension and distress were heard. When the rumor was heard of the decision “to take Jews to the wars, which was never spoken of previously,” as reported by Trebitsch, who was then living in Nikolsburg, people were sure it was just a joke. The image of a Jewish soldier never arose in their imagination. But when news from Galicia confirmed that conscription had begun, the leadership organized to resist “the evil decree.” Trebitsch wrote about efforts to flee and find shelter against the conscription agents, and he identified with the feelings of the Jewish elite, who found it difficult to accept equal conscription, and with the sadness felt when freshly married grooms were drafted. He was disappointed to hear about the stone wall they ran into when a delegation was sent to Vienna to ask for revocation of the law. Trebitsch also feared that military service would bring forced neglect of the commandments. He had seen a dreadful sight with his own eyes: “When about a hundred [Jewish soldiers] passed through here. . . . Some of them ate non-kosher food and drank a lot, but do not judge your fellow until you come to his place; they ate hametz on Passover and drank non-kosher wine; they are prevented from observing the Sabbath.”36 For the emperor, military service was the entrée to citizenship and the test of patriotism, which is why he rejected the reluctance of his war council, headed by the Hungarian field marshal András Hadik (1710–1790), who saw no vital need for Jewish soldiers, but he also warned against interfering with freedom of religion, declaring that the Jews should be enabled to eat kosher food and observe the Sabbath. In the order issued in May 1789 to the Jews of Galicia, the conscription law is paragraph forty-nine, and it states that Jewish subjects were apt for military service like Christian subjects. Hence, the instructions relative to conscription applied to them. However, to avoid dispersing them among various military units, they would all be placed in the transportation

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branch, where they could eat together according to the concepts and customs of their religion. It would also be taken into consideration that no work would be imposed on the Sabbath, except for necessary tasks, which Christians were also required to perform on Sundays and holidays.37 From his prison cell, Lord Gordon attacked the emperor for cruelly cutting off the Jews’ beards in the areas under his rule and for not understanding the grave consequences of the conscription law: he was forcing them to enlist in the Catholic army and to become soldiers and crusaders, fighting against their brethren. Saul Ascher (1767–1822), a Berlin intellectual, presented an original argument, deviating from the position of the Maskilim. He rejected the conscription of Jews so long as they were not free citizens, and those who bore the burden were only members of the lower classes. In the absence of civil equality, patriotism should not be expected of them. Like Gordon, he regarded the Emperor’s policy as a tyrannical act in an era of political upheavals. For young servant Asher Lehman, who was on the lowest level of Jewish society, this was not a theoretical matter to thrash out, but a development that required him to change the course of his life. We encountered Lehman when he had settled into his job as an immigrant from Germany, pleased with his lot in the home of one of the wealthy Jews of Prague. Now, following Joseph II’s directive, he reported that “a turmoil arose among the Jews. They howled and shed bitter tears. In the synagogues . . . they recited Psalms, fasted, and held prayer services until midnight.” An item in the press stating that the Jews must become Austrian soldiers also reached his worried parents, and in an urgent letter, they summoned him back to Franconia. Although, as a citizen of another country, he was exempt from military service, in the great panic, no one wanted to run risks, and sadly, he left Prague in the spring of 1789, a few days before the first contingent of Jewish draftees left the city.38 The internal division was also evident in the dispute over the proper response to the conscription law. The issue of the extent of loyalty to the state was infused with trepidation regarding the deepened secularization among the several thousand young Jewish soldiers, who would no longer be supervised by the religious community. The editors of Hameasef reported that a letter had reached them “about the news that in the states of his highness the emperor, who was now fighting against the Ottoman Sultan, he would take Jews living under his rule to serve in the war like his other people.” The letter indicated that the Jews of Galicia absolutely objected to this and were lamenting because of the evil decree: “And the house of Israel raised a cry of lamentation and mourning, for fear of sinning against God and disobeying His religion.” Hameasef reassured them that there was no reason for such a response, because freedom

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of religion would be preserved, and “the emperor had no intention of making them convert.” Aside from that, during war it was permitted to violate the Sabbath, and anyone with eyes in his head could expect that in return for conscription in the army, the state would open the gates for much-desired citizenship. The members of the delegation from Galicia and Hungary, who arrived at the royal palace to beg the emperor to revoke the law, were disappointed by the refusal of the communities of Mantua and Trieste to support them. In a letter from Trieste to Vienna, they asked: “Shall we appear ungrateful toward him who benefited the members of our covenant and placed his trust in us?” After all, the Austrian regime was tolerant, and it was possible to avoid the collision between duty to the state and duty to the religion.39 News from Prague illuminated the strength of the tension in a single flash. When twenty-five recruits boarded the carriage on Tuesday, May 12, 1789, on their way to military service, the excitement came to a head: “We heard the voice of mothers mourning for their sons, sisters moaning for their brothers, and young women for the grooms of their youth, as they left the city of their birth to do battle against our enemies.” Rabbi Landau visited the recruits in their barracks and gave a sermon to fortify their spirit, praising their enlistment for the state, asking them to regard the Christians as their brethren, and giving them advice about avoiding transgression, observing the Sabbath, and praying. All his listeners shed tears, and the officers “promised to go easy on them in their service, as much as they could, and to watch them as the apple of their eye.” Feeling unbearable tension between acknowledging the duty to obey the emperor’s orders and awareness that, at the same time, he was congratulating Jews for entering a foreign realm, the seventy-six-year-old rabbi of the Prague community nearly collapsed: “We who, in concern refrained from speaking, lest the pain overcome and weaken him, took him from there and brought him to his home.”40 The appeal of the German Jew to the American president requesting shelter for the desperate Jews might have been only a literary experiment, but in the United States after the War of Independence, people believed that the dilemmas entailed by dual loyalty had nearly been resolved. As we have seen, several Jews were among the patriotic fighters who volunteered enthusiastically out of identification with the values of liberty. A Hebrew prayer of thanks written for the New York community in 1784 connected the achievements on the battlefield against the British to hope for redemption: “Just as You gave strength to Samson, the son of Manoah, who tore apart a young lion with his power, so may You strengthen the shield of the salvation of our Lord, the head and commander of the army, George Washington, anointed for war on the sea and on the land,

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and in the country with all its armies. . . . Just as you gave these thirteen states of America perpetual freedom, so may you bring us out once again from slavery to freedom.”41 A letter of protest sent on September 7, 1787, by Philadelphia patriot Jonas Phillips to George Washington and the members of the commission that drafted the federal Constitution demanded removal of any mention of the New Testament in civilian oaths. This Jew, who was born in Germany and was the first to send the Declaration of Independence to Europe, adopted the lexicon of the American Revolution, and in its name he demanded that the Jews, who had also shed their blood for freedom in the struggle against Britain, should, like the other citizens of the colonies, enjoy full equality. We, too, aspire to live in happiness in this land of freedom, he wrote. To emphasize his dual identity, Jonas chose to sign his letter with the date of the Hebrew calendar, 24 Elul, 5547.42 In a mass procession, the city of Philadelphia celebrated the signing of the Constitution on July 4, 1788. Representatives of various religions, including a Jewish rabbi, marched arm in arm. Naphtali Phillips, who was then a lad of fifteen, reported about the great excitement that seized him while in the crowd and about his pride upon seeing the joint demonstration of the various groups that composed the new state. He remembered very well that tables laden with food were placed in one of the streets, and a special table was set aside for the Jews, with kosher food on it—pickled salmon, bread, juice, almonds, and raisins. The historians of American Jewry emphasized that “nothing like this had ever been seen in any Christian settlement,” a synagogue rabbi marching hand in hand with Christian clergy, in what was “the first ecumenical procession of its kind.”43 Gershom Seixas, represented the religious leadership seeking to combine the Jewish religion with the values of the United States. The most outstanding expression of this was in a sermon that he gave on Thanksgiving (November 26, 1789) during a ceremony in a synagogue, intended to obey Washington’s instructions to organize this kind of ceremonies. Though it was connected with the tradition of patriotic ceremonies and sermons in the local language held in European synagogues to mark significant events in the life of the state and its leaders, it also expressed deep identification with the American Revolution, endowing its fundamental ideas with religious significance. Like the guidance of God, the Constitution does not derive authority from that of a tyrannical king over his subjects or of a master over his slaves, but rather from the voice of reason, directed at universal justice and truth. Regarding the approximately 2,500 Jews in the United States, Seixas emphasized the great fortune that had

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befallen them when they became equal partners in all the advantages that derive from good government. With huge enthusiasm, he added that there was no other country in the world where Jews were free to act according to the dictates of their conscience, without restricting adhesion to the principles of their faith. America was the marvelous place where, in this age of enlightenment, the tension between religious and political loyalty was dissolved.44

“Th e Hor r i bl e E v ents in Fr a nce”: 1789 When this Thanksgiving sermon on liberty and equality was delivered in New York, the French Revolution had already reached an advanced stage, about a month before the debate in the National Assembly on the naturalization of the Jewish minority (about 40,000 out of 28,000,000) in a country that had changed itself. The pace of events in the fateful year of 1789 was dizzying. Since Louis XVI had ordered the convening of the Estates General to help implement financial reforms, political control slipped from the hands of his court in Versailles, and the voice of public opinion was heard loudly, mainly in the Cahiers de doléances (lists of grievances), which were intended to guide the delegates. The travel diary of Arthur Young (1742–1820), an English scholar of conservative bent who witnessed the events, testifies to the atmosphere of emergency. Young had reached Paris in the spring, and, with awareness of the greatness of the historical moment, he listened, documented, and sought “to catch the ideas of the moment.” On June 8, he wrote that the political atmosphere was tense: “Paris is at present in such a ferment about the Estates General, now holding at Versailles, that conversation is absolutely absorbed by them. Not a word of anything else talked of.” He added that, according to what he had heard in coffeehouses and from government officials, there was a feeling of great danger, and among the courtiers, the nobility, the church, and the army, they feared “the ideas of liberty, now afloat.” Thirst for news was great, and, in the name of liberty, the printing houses spread the revolutionary propaganda that undermined the regime, and something new was published every hour. Nearly a hundred pamphlets appeared within a week. Masses of people crowded the doors and windows of the coffeehouses in the center of the city, in the area of the Palais Royal, listening to inflammatory speeches. Young wrote: “I am all amazement at the ministry permitting such nests and hotbeds of sedition and revolt . . . principles that by and by must be opposed with vigour.” He could not understand why steps were not taken “to restrain this extreme licentiousness of publication” and how “such nests” were allowed to exist. Meanwhile, reports constantly arrived from the provinces about the rebellion of starving

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peasants, and the army was called on to maintain order in the markets. “The want of bread is terrible,” Young noted in his diary, and the poor couldn’t afford a simple loaf of bread, the price of which had soared. Poor harvests in the past two years and the harsh winter of 1788–1789 aggravated distress. All eyes were raised to the deliberations in Versailles. Young missed the symbolic day, July 14, when riots broke out in the capital, and the Bastille, which represented tyranny, fell to the rebels. At the time he was traveling in the towns and villages of eastern France, and he only read about the events six days later in a tavern in Strasbourg. He was shocked, and although he denied the justification of the revolution, he wrote about the events in Paris with excitement: “In a word, of the absolute overthrow of the old government. Every thing being now decided, and the kingdom absolutely in the hands of the assembly. . . . It will be a great spectacle for the world to view, in this enlightened age, the representatives of twenty-five millions of people [in Young’s estimation] sitting on the construction of a new and better order and fabric of liberty, than Europe has yet offered.”45 Like Young, Trebitsch, who only heard about the events from his place of residence in Moravia, didn’t conceal the importance of the great drama in France from his readers, but he portrayed it as a disaster: “I saw a scandal, and the traitorous times, giving counsel to rebel against the monarchy. . . . They sought to throw off the yoke of their masters.” Trebitsch defined the revolution as “the ruin of the world and the destruction of its foundation.” He prayed for the year 5549 to pass, with its curses, and hoped “the year 5550 would enter with its corrections.” In the style of the Book of Lamentations, Trebitsch wept for Paris, noting that “the capital of all the nations has become a city of blood,” and for the king, who had lost his authority. “The horrible events in France” undermined the basis of the familiar world.46 For Gabriel Ben Yosef Wahl, a Torah scholar from Issenheim in Alsace, the revolution was most palpably connected to acts of destruction. During the days following the fall of the Bastille, the summer of the Great Fear (la grande peur, which seized the peasants because they believed the nobles intended to take revenge and starve them), he was eyewitness to one of the peasants’ attacks on the Jewish communities in the east of the country. His dread of the pogroms was mingled with joy at the birth of his son, and, in the margins of a copy of the Tractate Berakhot, he wrote, two days before the fast of the Ninth of Av, about his feelings of tension between grief and consolation: I struggled in the struggles of the Lord, and I prayed for this child, to whom my wife, may she live, gave birth on the holy Sabbath of the seventh of Mena h.em Av [July 30, 1789]. The Lord consoled us from the sorrow we had

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for the country. About eighteen Jewish communities and their synagogues were destroyed, and the Torah scrolls, for our many sins, were torn up, and for the time being the Jews were driven out of them and robbed, and their houses were demolished, and all their holy books, that cannot be counted, for there is no number to the miracles and wonders that the Holy Lord has done for us and for all of Israel.

Hopes of gaining ownership of the land and the forfeiture of their debts along with their hostility toward the Jewish neighbors fanned the fury of the rioters. About twenty communities in Alsace fell victim to the riots, and about three thousand people were injured before the king signed a proclamation forbidding harassment of the Jews and the pogroms were suppressed. When news reached Versailles, Grégoire was the first to bring the need for a solution before the delegates of the National Assembly, thus beginning the discussions that eventually led to emancipation. In his speech on August 3, he drew a picture of the dreadful persecution of the Jews of Alsace, saying that, as a representative of a religion that regards all men as brothers, he must, on this occasion, demand the intervention of the assembly, by virtue of its authority, for the benefit of this miserable, persecuted nation.47 The readers of Hameasef learned for the first time about the fate of the Jews in the beginning of the revolution from an item about the violent attacks of the peasants. In the issue for Elul, 5549 (1789), Naphtali Herz Wessely reported that “empty and reckless men in the country of Alsace arose and wickedly destroyed the homes of the leaders of the country and the house of its priesthood, and they poured out fury and wrath upon the House of Israel, and they destroyed their houses, and they looted everything they had.” This was not an item complaining about the sorrows that plagued the communities of France as yet another chapter in the blood-soaked relations between Christians and Jews. Rather, it was the introduction to an emotional poem in which Wessely praised the example of the city of Basel for rescuing the Jews and giving shelter to several hundred refugees who crossed the border into Switzerland and fled to Basel. In the view of a man who was among the first in his generation to identify the historic shift, this conduct was convincing proof of the spirit of the new times: “For such good deeds are a sign of the precious soul of man, created in the Image.” Hence, in ceremonious lines, he expressed gratitude: “Basel! You are the testimony to this on the earth, the day the oppressed with sorrow found help in you, the day when the love of man was a jewel like a crown, you saw the plunder of Israel, and you stood in the breach.”48 When the first news from Paris and Versailles was published in the periodical of the Haskalah movement, the leaders of the Society for the Promotion of

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the Good and the Noble in Berlin stood behind the revolutionaries, just as, at the same time, they enthusiastically supported Joseph II’s reforms and the military conscription and Levin’s rebellion against the rabbinical elite in Europe. In the final issue for the year of 5549, the disturbing item about the pogroms in Alsace, committed by “empty and reckless” men, was kept separate from the other courses of the revolution. Hameasef reported that the delegates at “the Great Assembly” had enlisted “for straightening what is crooked . . . and their first consideration is to equalize the religion and liberty of all the people of their country, as with the people, so with the priest, as with the minister, so with the slave . . . and the nobility and those born in their families will no longer exalt themselves over the rest of the people with haughty eyes and arrogant hearts.” The Bastille was the symbol of tyranny (“frightening everyone with an honest heart and an abomination to honest people”). Storming the Bastille (“they destroyed it to the foundations and its prisoners were set free, and they killed the commander of the prison by the sword”) was a step toward the great task, “toward freedom for all those who live in the land.”49 For the Jewish communities of Alsace and Lorraine, the industrious printer, Abraham Spire, of Metz, published a detailed Yiddish chronicle of about a hundred pages crammed with political news and documents, mainly supplied by the meetings of the National Assembly beginning in mid-1789. After publishing that contemporary story, Spire chose a different channel of communication for his readers. Starting in November, he published twenty weekly issues of the Zeitung (an issue of one page each time), dated according to the portion of the week. He sent them to a hundred subscribers, consumers of the news, creating a circle of up to 1,500 readers. Spire internalized the new political lexicon and identified with its rhetoric (writing, for example, about “the tyranny of the aristocracy”). He saw himself as one of the patriots and missed none of the central events. Schechter has pointed out how easily the Jews adapted to decidedly modern ideas. On the first page, Spire proclaimed that something unprecedented had happened, and, as a service to his readers, who were hungry for news and for understanding the many and rapid events, in his broadsheet he described “the changes or uprisings in France, which they call a Revolution” (spelled out in Hebrew letters). He gathered his information from French publications that reached Metz, but for some time, he himself was an eyewitness to the events in Paris. By means of contemporary history, Spire taught his Yiddish readers in the eastern regions of France the political discourse of 1789. For example, he explained the importance of “the astounding victory” of the capture of the royal prison fortress on July 14, and he described the parade of a thousand women that removed Louis XVI from his palace. In a brief exposition of the basic values of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, Spire explained

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the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which was anchored in natural rights and gave every man freedom and equality.50 Though the Jews of France did not take part in the revolution as thinkers or initiators, Spire’s newspapers included them as an attentive and engaged readership. They told about Jews who contributed to the National Assembly’s fund for the needy, about their enlistment in the National Guard, and about the parliamentary debate about their status, translating the petitions and speeches from French. As a patriotic resident of Metz, Spire was an enthusiastic participant in the campaign waged by the elite and its leadership so that a Jew could be a citoyen—a citizen with equal rights. Paula Hyman emphasized the fundamental significance of the year 1789: French Jewry, small and relatively marginal in Europe, was suddenly thrown into the historical forefront of modern Judaism. The challenge was great: How were they to cope with the new opportunities, and how were they to negotiate between general citizenship and their particular, independent identity?51 The first worrisome signs of the gap between the values of equality and public opinion appeared in the Cahiers de doléances prepared for the Estates General. Almost all of them were indifferent to the Jews, but those from the eastern districts, where most of the Jews lived, mainly demanded increasing strictness of supervision and enlarging restrictions, and some even asked for expulsion. Very few voices called for naturalization. It quickly became clear, to great disappointment, that the universal articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen did not necessarily refer to the Jews. At that point it was evident that a special resolution of the National Assembly was necessary to dissipate the tension between the advocates and opponents of citizenship. The French Jews’ struggle for emancipation began on the very day, August 26, when the declaration was issued. Despite internal tension among the small groups that composed Parisian Jewry, Ashkenazi and Sephardi leaders joined together and addressed a petition to the National Assembly. They were enthusiastic patriots, they declared, watching with excitement “the acts of justice and law among you in the Great Assembly,” and they asked for correction of a historical injustice: the humiliation and segregation of the Jews. “In your laws you did not distinguish between man and man, and we, too, are called men.” Hence, it follows that you must not leave us outside the circle of French citizenship, they said. Nothing in our religion contradicts full loyalty to the state, and as evidence of our recognition of the new regime, and in return for citizenship, we will forgo communal autonomy. There was no doubt that the case of the Jews was a touchstone for the revolution: “If we are to rise from the pit of destruction into which we have fallen

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to the height of the distinction of the residents of the country, and if you grant us the right of possession in the land, you will have done what is proper to you because of the law and justice you have declared.” This step would resound throughout the world, and it was to be expected that other countries would follow in France’s footsteps, “also to proclaim liberty for the Hebrews who dwell under their scepter.” Five days later, on August 31, another petition was laid on the table of the National Assembly, drafted by the leaders of the communities in French districts: Metz, Alsace, and Lorraine. Among the signatories were Berr Isaac Berr of Nancy and Rabbi David Sinzheim (1745–1812), Cerf Berr’s brotherin-law. They demanded a special declaration that would grant the status and privileges of citizenship to the Jews, but they also expressed a different position when they refused to dismantle the communal framework, asking for the liberty they deserved to include the collective right to maintain synagogues, rabbis, and lay leaders in the new era as well. The Jews of France were divided. The leaders of Bordeaux addressed Grégoire, asking him to advance recognition of the preferential civil rights of the Sephardim, already anchored in royal privileges, but not to include them in the discussions of the status of the Ashkenazi Jews. The dispute between Paris and the eastern districts also divided the communities of Lorraine. A special petition reached Versailles from the communities of Lunéville and Sarreguemines, which had been annexed to France about twenty years earlier. They stated that the leaders of Alsace and Lorraine did not represent them. Their categorical position was that there was no longer any need for the establishment of lay leaders and rabbis, and it ought to be dismantled. They merely exploited the people and levied high taxes. Therefore, they asked to be freed from subjection to the community of Nancy. At least for Ensheim, the mathematician, formerly a tutor in the Mendelssohn home in Berlin and the representative of the French branch of the Haskalah movement, nearly messianic hopes towered over the crisis in Jewish solidarity. Ensheim served as a contact person who made sure to publish the exciting news in the communications network of the Haskalah movement throughout Europe. He issued timely reports to the editors of Hameasef and translated excerpts from the debates of the National Assembly into Hebrew. In a poem in praise of the revolutionary French parliament, Ensheim encouraged his brethren: “O House of Jacob! Sated with grief, you were brought down, though innocent of crime; strengthen your heart, because there is an end, justice is near and the year of redemption.”52 However, his optimism was premature. The summer of 1789 passed, and, to the great frustration of the activists, the petitions of the French Jews were not discussed in the National Assembly. The deadlock only broke about a month and a half later. A delegation from the eastern districts arrived immediately

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after Succot (October 14) and was allowed to enter the hall and speak directly to the delegates at the evening session. The short speech read by Berr Isaac Berr made an impression. An opportunity was offered to the legislative body to correct a historical error and do justice to a persecuted nation. “The day will come when the veil of shame that was upon our face for many days will be torn to shreds,” Berr said, appealing both to principles and to emotions. “The day will come when we will be in the eyes of every man like a beloved, attached brother. . . . May the judgment of our liberty be brought to light.” The chairman replied that the sincerity of his words was evident, and he promised that the request would receive attention. In a special gesture, the members of the delegation were asked to sit among the delegates to the assembly while it worked.53 Two months later, in the last days of 1789 (December 21–24), after the assembly moved to Paris, the debate was finally held on the naturalization of the Jews. It was placed on the agenda only incidentally. Immediately after the debate over the status of non-Catholics began, they realized that, along with Protestants, executioners, and actors, who were suspected of defective morality, also stood forty thousand Jews, whose status had not been regulated. The Bishop of Nancy, Louis Henri de La Fare (1752–1829), reminded the National Assembly that the English Jew Law of 1753 was revoked following public protests, and he warned against a further mass uprising in the east of the country. The division between the conservatives, who were loyal to the monarchy, the representatives of Alsace and Lorraine, and the representatives of the Church, on the one hand, and the liberal left wing (according to where they were seated), on the other, was expressed in a difference of opinion that divided the assembly. The priest Jean Siffrin Maury (1746–1817), for example, opposed naturalization, arguing that the Jews were not only a group with a different religion, but they were a separate nation and could not be French. A delegate from the east, Duke Victor de Broglie (1718–1804) from Colmar, accused the Jews of being cosmopolitan and therefore only temporary residents. It would be irresponsible to grant them citizenship before they underwent preparation and examination, and their foreignness was removed. Like Maury, he warned against an invasion into France that was liable to turn it into a Jewish colony. In contrast, the count Stanislas Clermont-Tonnerre (1757–1792), a young nobleman with a military past who joined the side of the revolutionaries but remained monarchical in his views, pointed out the unacceptable contradiction between the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and the exclusion of an entire group from it. His speech, which was later seen as a foundation stone of emancipation, made political equality dependent on dismantling autonomy, tracing the outlines of citizenship in a modern state. Civil rights

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were individual, he claimed, not given to the Jewish nation. The state could not recognize another collective entity, and those who refused to break up the communal frameworks were not welcome in it. Another supporter of naturalization was Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), just thirty-one and already one of the most determined and uncompromising fighters for the principles of the revolution. For anyone who recognized these universal rights, they were indivisible; the emancipation of the Jews was their necessary corollary. Beyond all the images and remnants of the past, this was a question of the entire human race. The term man was enough to accord human and civil rights to the Jews. Members of that persecuted nation would receive human rights in their home country, and in the end, their yearned-for happiness as well. However, at this stage, these arguments did not sway the listeners. The heavy hand of suspicion, negative images, and warnings against emancipation won out, and the Jewish question was separated from the discussion of non-Catholics and set aside, unresolved.54 In his Zeitung, which reported on the debate in the National Assembly almost on a daily basis, Spire did not conceal his great disappointment from the readers and admitted failure. The patriot from Metz explained that the opposition was stronger, and the delegates from the eastern districts succeeded in their efforts to prevent the decision of naturalizing the Jews. Nevertheless, our faith in the values of the Enlightenment has not dwindled, he wrote; our hopes “will wait for time and reason to drive out shameful prejudice, which corrupts humanity.”55 Within five days, the news reached Bordeaux, and the leadership of the Sephardi merchants were seized with panic. For them, postponement of the decision meant that their citizenship was not self-evident. They gathered for an urgent discussion and chose a delegation to go to Paris immediately (David Gradis, David Dacosta, Lopez Dubec, and others), and on the last day of 1789, they drafted a petition to the National Assembly. They wished to anchor their citizenship both in the veteran privileges they had enjoyed since the sixteenth century and in their full loyalty to the revolution, as well as in the lack of autonomous characteristics. Their petition deepened the gap between them and the Ashkenazim. The Bordeaux leaders were angry because the demands of the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine created the impression that they also came from the Sephardim. Their criticism was fierce and slanderous: only the religious zealotry of the Ashkenazim could have kept them from understanding the advantages of French citizenship and the price worth paying for it. The petition from Bordeaux on December 31, 1789, showed once again, nearly thirty years after de Pinto’s separatist response to Voltaire, the cultural chasm between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, which sharpened the vision of the Sephardim:

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they themselves belonged to the new world, whereas the Ashkenazim were part of the old one.56 For the revolutionaries, the significance of the dispute about emancipation went far beyond the treatment of a small minority whose legal status had to be determined. This was a prime example of Jacob Talmon’s statement that the Jewish component in universal history was a touchstone for the confrontation that began the day after the victory of the secular worldview in the French revolution, a confrontation between apparently contradictory trends: aspiration for unification and the clinging to particularism.57 The revolutionary situation, Jay Berkovitz emphasized, produced a sense of special urgency. Again and again, the Jews were reminded that they had a holy duty to reform themselves, and this was the condition for civic equality. Fear of a rift with the past and the tradition seized those who strove to retain the time-honored frameworks as much as possible.58 The speakers in the debate over emancipation plotted the course from membership in the autonomous Jewish nation to status as individuals with French citizenship, reaching the conclusion that emerged from the deep processes of the entire eighteenth century—making the individual central and independent. At the same time, this debate struck one of the most sensitive nerves in the encounter between the Jews and the modern state.59 The dispute, which divided the Jews of France, revolved around the price that should be paid for citizenship. It revealed both the new opportunities and the risks, and in 1789, it was part of a parallel dispute among the Jews of Europe. Joseph II’s legislation, and especially the obligation of military service as the quintessential sign of loyalty, simultaneously aroused nearly messianic enthusiasm and the dread of secularization and loss of religious control. In London, Moshe Tsevi protested in the name of the Jews of “the old world,” held in contempt by the Jews of “the new world” and their permissive way of life. In angry rebellion against the community leadership and the rabbis, the “prisoner of Nesvizh,” Wolf, implored the Polish Sejm to dismantle the Kahal forever. In the spirit of rebellion, derived to a great degree from criticism and rejection but also from recognition that communal autonomy was an obstacle to citizenship, Hourwitz sent a warning from Paris to Versailles, shortly before the speech by Berr Isaac Berr. He expressed astonishment upon learning that the National Assembly had agreed to hear the arguments advanced by the delegation from Metz, so it was vital for his opinion to be heard: a pious Jew could maintain his religion even without tyrannically controlling “the conscience of his Jewish brethren by means of rabbinical Inquisition.”60 From the radical side of the inner rift, both Simon Ben Wolf in Poland and Zalkind Hourwitz in France argued that the new regime, whether it be reformist or revolutionary,

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would help those Jews who wished to make their own revolution and free themselves from communal rule.

Note s 1 Morning Herald, January 10, 1788. 2. Annual Register for the Year 1788 (London: Unknown, 1790), 198–199; “Song on the Battle Fought between Humphreys and Mendoza at Stilton in Huntingdonshire,” 1789; J. H. Ramberg, The Triumph, etching, 1788, Treasures of Jewish Heritage, The Jewish Museum London (London: The Jewish Museum, 2006), 124. 3. David Levi, Letters to Dr. Priestley in Answer to His Letters to the Jews, part 2 (London: Printed for the Author, 1789); and see David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewish Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 169–183; David Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 296–300. 4. Daniel Mendoza, The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza, ed. Paul Magriel (London: Batsford, 1951); Mendoza, The Modern Art of Boxing (London: Printed for the Author, 1789). See Fritz Heymann, Der Chevalier von Geldern: Eine Chronik vom Abenteuer der Juden (Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1937), 447– 474; Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), 219–222; John Whale, “Daniel Mendoza’s Contests of Identity: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Nation in Georgian Prize-fighting,” Romanticism 14, no. 3 (2009): 259–271; Ronald Schechter and Liz Clarke, Mendoza the Jew—Boxing, Manliness, and Nationalism: A Graphic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Wheldon Wynn, The Fighting Jew: The Life and Times of Daniel Mendoza (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2019). Direct quotations are taken from Mendoza, Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza; Containing a Faithful Narrative of the Various Vicissitudes of His Life, and an Account of the Numerous Contests in which He Has Been Engaged, with Observations on Each; Containing also Genuine Anecdotes of Many Distinguished Characters—A New Edition (London: G. Hayden, 1816). 5. Mendoza, The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza, 48–50, 61–67, 192–193. 6. The Odiad, or Battle of Humphries and Mendoza: An Heroic Poem (London: S. W. Fores, 1788). 7. Mendoza, The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza, 108. 8. Moshe Tsevi, Ze quntres niqra ‘olam h.adash veniqra ‘olam hafukh, ‘a[l] sh[em] ma’asei hah.adashim vehafukhim (London: Unknown, 1789). 9. See Stanley Mirvis, “Joshua Hezkiah Decordova and A Rabbinic CounterEnlightenment from Colonial Jamaica,” in Reappraisals and New Studies of the

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Modern Jewish Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Seltzer, ed. Brian M. Smolett and Christian Wiese (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 104–122. 10. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 63. 11. Naphtali Herz Wessely, “Qol nehi ‘al mot rav moshe b”r menah.em midessau,” Hameasef 3 (Adar 1, 5546 [1786]): 81–85. 12. Isaac Euchel, Toldot rabenu hah.akham moshe ben menah.em (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1789), 110. See Richard I. Cohen, “Imagining Moses Mendelssohn (1771–2014),” in Braun Lectures in the History of the Jews in Prussia, vol. 18, ed. Shmuel Feiner (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2014), 5–40. 13. “Auszug eines Schreiben aus Königsberg in Preussen, vom Junius,” Deutsche Zeitung für Jugend und ihere Freunde 28 (July 13, 1787): 236–238; Euchel, Toldot rabenu, 109–110; Yael Sela-Teichler, “Music, Acculturation, and Haskalah between Berlin and Königsberg in the 1780s,” Jewish Quarterly Review 103 (2013): 352–384. 14. “Vermischte Nachrichten,” Deutsche Zeitung für Jugend und ihere Freunde 29 (July 20, 1787): 246; Tavnit h.evrat shoh.arei hatov vehatushia (Königsberg and Berlin: Unknown, 1787). 15. Shimon Ben Zechariah, “H.inukh ne’arim, ‘al devar hekhreh. h.inukh habanim karaui,” Hameasef 4 (1787): 33–53. See also Zohar Shavit, “Rousseau beglimat harambam: pereq behakhnasat kitvei haneorot learon hasefarim hayehudi heh.adash betequfat hahaskala,” Zion 78 (2014): 135–173. 16. Herz Homberg, “Igeret el ro’ei se pezura yisrael,” Hameasef 4 (1788): 227–236; Marcus Herz, An die Herausgeber des hebräischen Sammlers über die frühe Beerdigung der Juden (Berlin: C. F. Voss, 1787); Herz, Mikhtav haadon hah.akham hah.oqer hamefoar . . . el meh.abrei hemeasef (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1789); Elazar Flekeles, Sefer ‘olat hatsibor, vol. 1 (Prague: Unknown, 1787), Drush 1; Shaul Levin, Mitspe yoqtael (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1789); Yitsh.aq Daniel Itzig and David Friedländer, “Moda’a,” Hameasef 5 (1789): 223–224. See also Rachel Mankin, “Naftali herz homberg, hademut vehadimui,” Zion 71 (2006): 153–202; Moshe Samet, Hah.adash asur min hatora: praqim betoldot haortodoqsia (Jerusalem: The Dinur Center, 2005), 171–188. 17. ‘Ovadia Beharav Moha”rar Barukh [Shaul Levin], Mitspe yoqtael, objections to the book Torat yequtiel by Rabbi Raphael Hacohen, Berlin 5549 [1789]. 18. Gershom Scholem, “Le’inyan r. yisrael leibl ufulmuso neged hah.asidut,” Zion 20 (1956): appendix, “‘Eduto shel r. shlomo dubno ‘al hah.asidut,” 161–162. 19. “Mikhtav meqehilat vilna leqehilat pinsk, 6 Tammuz 5544,” in H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem bashanim 5532–5575 (1772–1815), vol. 1, ed. Mordecai Wilenski (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 132–136. See also

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Mordecai Nadav, “Qehilat pinsk-karlin bein h.asidut lehitnagdut,” Zion 34 (1969): 98–108. 20. Elimelech of Leżajsk, No’am elimelekh, ed. Gedalia Negal (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1978). The letter is also included in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 168–176. 21. H.erem qahal qraqov, Tishrei 18, 5546, in Wilenski, Hasidim umitnagdim, 137–141. 22. Proclamation from the community of Mogilev, Kislev 5547, and the Regulations of Shklov, Tevet 11, 5547, in Wilenski, Hasidim umitnagdim, 148–159. 23. “Igeret r. shneor zalman miladi leqahal mohilev,” in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 160–167; Jacob Barnai, Igrot h.asidim meerets yisrael (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1980), 117–179. See also Etkes, Ba’al hatanya: rabi shneur zalman milyadi vereshita shel h.asidut h.abad (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2012), 29–41, 230–239. 24. “Igeret r. shneur zalman leh.asidav beqehilat ushats,” in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 296–297. 25. See Israel Klausner, Vilna betequfat hagaon: hamilh.ama haruh.anit vehah.evratit beqehilat vilna betequfat hagra (Jerusalem: Sinai, 1942), 87–294; Israel Klausner, Vilna yerushalayim delita, dorot rishonim 1495–1881 (Tel Aviv: Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, 1988), 95–111; Yehoshua Mondshine, “’Ir Vilna – qirya neemana?,” Kerem H.abad 4, no. 1 (1992): Documents 4–21; Israel Zinberg, “Di makhlokes tsvishn di rashei hakahal un dem rav in vilne in der tsvaiter helft 18ten y”h,” YIVO Historishe Shriftn 2 (1937): 317–321. 26. “Haasir benaiswizh el hasejm hamitqayim ‘akhshav bidvar hatsorekh bereforma shel hayehudim,” in Klausner, “Hamaavaq hapneimi beqehilot rusia velita vehatsa’at r. shimon ben wolf letiqunim,” He’avar 19 (1972): 64–73. See also Klausner, Vilna betequfat hagaon, 274–282. 27. Schreiben eines deutschen Juden an der amerikanischen Präsidenten O (Frankfurt: Unknown, 1787); “Schreiben eines deutschen Juden, an den Präsidenten des Kongress der vereinigten Staaten von Amerika,” Deutsches Museum 1 (1783): 558–566. See also Dov Weinreb, “Tsionut etsel yehudei germania betequfat hahaskala,” Kneset 1 (1936): 465–478; Jacob Toury, “‘Moshavot yehudiot’ badiunim harishonim shel be’ayat hayehudim,” Hatsyonot 5 (1978): 15–16; Hans Lamm, “The So-Called Letter of a German Jew to the President of the Congress of the United States of America of 1783,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 37 (1947): 171–184; Christoph Schweitzer, “Goecking, Dohm, Mendelssohn and the ῾Schreiben eines deutschen Juden an den Präsidenten des Kongress der vereinigten Staaten von Amerika,’” Lessing Yearbook 36 (2004–2005): 185–198. 28. See ; Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein: A Daughter of the Enlightenment, 1758–1818, 110–111.

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29. Henri Jean-Baptiste Grégoire, Essai sur la régération physique, morale, et politique des juifs (1789), Wikisource, October 14, 2013, https://fr.wikisource .org/wiki/Essai_sur_la_r%C3%A9g%C3%A9n%C3%A9ration_physique, _morale_et_politique_des_ Juifs, 14, 49, 120, 214, respectively. See Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 56–80; Rita Hermo-Belot, “The Abbé Grégoire’s Program for the Jews: Social Reform and Spiritual Project,” in The Abbé Grégoire and His World, ed. Jeremy D. Popkin and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Springer, 2000), 13–26; Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), chs. 3–4; Yerah.miel Cohen, “Retoriqat haemantsipatsia shel hayehudim utemunat he’atid,” in Hamahapakha hatsarfatit verishuma, ed. Cohen (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1991), 145–169; Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), ch. 4. 30. Grégoire, Essai sur la régération physique, morale, et politique des juifs, 80, 176, 210, 221, respectively. Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 48; On the connections with Simon Geldern and his letter to him (September 1, 1788) shortly before his death, see Ludwig Rosenthal, “Die Beziehungen des ῾Chevalier van Geldern’ zu regierenden Fürstenhäusern, hohen Staatsbeamten und andern Standespersonen,” Heine Jahrbuch 14 (1975): 143–145. 31. See Frances Malino, A Jew in the French Revolution: The Life of Zalkind Hourwitz (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996); Malino, “The Right to be Equal: Zalkind Hourwitz and the Revolution of 1789,” in From East and West: Jews in Changing Europe 1750–1870, ed. Malino and David Sorkin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 85–106; Lynn Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History (Boston: Bedford Books, 1996), 48–50; Jonathan I. Israel, Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx, The Fight for a Secular World of Universal and Equal Rights (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021), 195–231. 32. See Richard Pipes, “Katherine II and the Jews,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 5, no. 2 (1975): 3–20; John Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia, 1772–1825 (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 68–80; Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Littman Library, 2010), 331–337. 33. See Abraham Haber, “Hapundaqaim hayehudim bapublitsistiqa hapolanit shel ‘hasejm hagadol,’ (1788–1792),” Gal’ed 2 (1973): 1–24. 34. See “Edict des hochseligen und in Gott ruhenden Kaisers, Josephs des Zweiten, die Juden in Galizien betreffend,” Dutsche Zugabe zum sechsten Jahrgang der hebräischen Monatsschrift der Sammler (April 1790): 1–23; Michael Silber, “Josephinian Reforms,” in The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern

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Europe, vol. 1, ed. Hundert, 831–834; Michael Silber, “The Making of Habsburg Jewry in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, 7: The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Carp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 790–792; Joseph Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II (Stuttgart: Bleicher Verlag, 1986), 444–449; Michael Hochedlinger, “Verbesserung und Nutzbarmachung? Zur Einführung der Militärdienstpflicht für Juden in der Habsburgermonarchie 1788–1789,” in Militär und Religiosität in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Michael Kaiser and Stefan Kroll (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2009), 97–120; Joshua Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 22–25; David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), ch. 6; A. Y. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha; meh.qarim betoldot galitsia bameah hashmone-‘esre (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1956), 149–158, 169–177; Rachel Menkin, “Klalei hahitnahagut lamorim hayehudim bevatei hasefer begalitsia uveludemiria: te’uda mitequfato shel haqeisar yosef hasheni,” Gal’ed 20 (2006): 113–124. 35. See Silber, “From Tolerated Aliens to Citizen-Soldiers: Jewish Military Service in the Era of Joseph II,” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rosenblit (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 19–36. 36. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851sections 59, 61, 62; Trebitsch, Tsait geshikhte, (Brno: Unknown, 1801), section 61. 37. “Edict des hochseligen und in Gott ruhenden Kaisers,” 19. 38. Israel Solomons, “Lord George Gordon’s Conversion to Judaism,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 7 (1915): 252–253; Saul Ascher, Bemerkungen über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, veranlasst bei der Frage: Soll der Jude Soldat werden? (Berlin: Johann Andreas Kunze, 1788); Ascher Lehmann Weldtsberg, Mein Tagebuch von 1784 bis jetzt (Gerwisch: Privatdruck, 1936). See also Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 104–105; William Hiscott, Saul Ascher: Berliner, Aufklärer, Eine Philosophiehistorische Darstellung (Hanover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2017), 259–284. 39. “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 4 (Tammuz 5548): 331–334; “Igeret rabanei q”q triest le’ir habira vina,” Hameasef 4 (Elul 5548): 386–388; Shlomo Simonson, Toldot hayehudim bedukasut mantova, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1963), 345; See also Lois C. Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 148–152. 40. “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 4 (Iyar 5549): 252–255. 41. Handele Johann Ben Ettingen, “Tefila,” in Raphael Mahler, “Yahadut ameriqa vere’ayon shivat tsiyon betequfat hamahapakha haameriqanit,” Zion 15 (1950): 122–124.

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42. Jonas Phillips, “Letter to the Federal Constitutional Convention (7/9/1787),” in A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654–1875, ed. Morris U. Schappes (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 68–69. 43. See Naphtali Phillips, “The Federal Parade of 1788,” American Jewish Archives 7 (1955): 65–67. 44. Gershom Seixas, Religious Discourse, Delivered in the Synagogue in this City on Thursday the 6th November, 1789 . . . to be observed as A Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer (New York: Unknown, 1789). A special prayer for the first president, George Washington, his vice president, and the members of Congress was recited in the Beit Shalom congregation of Richmond in 1789. It included the words: “Merciful God, You saved us from our enemies, from those who rose up against us, you saved us. You girded us with strength to crush the arrogance of those who hate us.” See the Open Siddur Project, accessed April 29, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yxoqkrlq; see also Jonathan Sarna, “Jewish Prayers for the United States Government: A Study in the Liturgy of Politics and the Politics of Liturgy,” in Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue: Studies in the History of Prayer, ed. Ruth Langer and Steven Fine (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 205–224. 45. Arthur Young, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789, ed. Matilda Betham-Edwards (London: George Bell, [1792] 1909), 151–154, 169–172, 206, 212–214. Within the vast literature on the French Revolution, see François Furet, Revolutionary France 1770–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (London: Vintage, 1989); Jonathan Israel, Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 46. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, sections 65, 69, 90; Trebitsch, Tsait geshikhte, section 92. 47. See M. Ginsburger, Israelitische Friedhof in Jungholz (Gebweiler: J. Dryfus, 1904), 33–34; Zosa Szajkowski, “Pera’ot bealzas be’et hamahapakhot shel 1789, 1830, ve-1848,” Zion 20 (1956): 82–102. 48. Wessely, “Shirim,” Hameasef 5 (Elul 5549 [1789]): 353–354. 49. “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 5 (Elul 5549 [1789]): 365–367. See Shmuel Werses, “Hamahapekha hatsarfatit beaspaqlaria shel hasifrut ha’ivrit,” in Haqitsa ‘ami: sifrut hahaskala be’idan hamodernizatsia (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2001), 117–156 (esp. 118–122). 50. Abraham Spire, Beshreibung fun der ferenderung oder oif ruahr in frankraikh, see the edition of Simon Schwarzfuchs, ed., Le journal révolutionnaire d’Abraham Spire (Verdier: Institut Alain de Rothschild, 1989) See also Ya’aqov Shatski, “A yidish vokhenblat in der tsait fun der frantsoizisher revolutsia,” YIVO Bletter 2 (1931): 49–72; Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 178–185.

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51. Spire, Beshreibung, 90. See Paula E. Hyman, The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), ch. 2. Lazarus Bendavid, from the circle of Maskilim in Berlin, managed to publish in 1789 a collection of accounts translated from French to German, Sammlung der Schriften an die Nationalversammlung: Die Juden und ihre büregerliche Verbesserung betreffend (Berlin: Petit und Schöne, 1789). See, among others, Elias Tcherikower, Yehudim be’itot mahapekha (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1957), 23–103; Raphael Mahler, Divrei yemei Yisrael, dorot ah.aronim, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Hapoalim, 1961), 121–139; Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, ch. 5; Malino, A Jew in the French Revolution; Szajkowski, Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848 (New York: Ktav Publication House, 1970); Margaret R. O’Leary, Forging Freedom: The Life of Cerf Berr Médelsheim (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2012), ch. 6. 52. Quoted from a contemporary Hebrew translation, apparently by Moses Ensheim: “Mikhtav shaluah. leva’ad rashei ha’am bemedinat tsarfat yom d[alet], d[alet] elul taf-quf-mem-tet me’et ‘adat hayehudim hagarim bepariz habira,” Hameasef 5 (Elul 5549 [1789]): 367–371. The poem in praise of the National Assembly also appeared in Hameasef (Marh.eshvan 5550 [1789]): 33–36. See Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 185–188. 53. The speech of Berr Isaac Berr was translated immediately into Hebrew: “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 6 (Tishrei 5550 [1789]): 30–32. See also O’Leary, Forging Freedom, 280–282. 54. See Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, 130–139; David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, ch. 7; Sorkin, The Count Stanuslas de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “To the Jews as a Nation . . .”: The Career of a Quotation, Jacob Katz Memorial Lecture, 2011 (Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute, 2012). 55. Spire, Tsaitung (Parashat Yitro 5550), 135–136; and see Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 183–184. 56. See Szajkowski, “Mishlah.oteihem shel yehudei bordo el va’adat malzerb (1788) veel haasefa haleumit (1790): te’udot h.adashot letoldot haemantsipatsia shel yehudei tsarfat,” Zion 18 (1953): 31–79 (esp. 42–46); Evelyne Oliel-Grausz, “Jewish Politics and the Assemblée Constituante: Intercession, Lobbying and Political Acculturation,” unpublished paper, Yale University, 2016. 57. Ya’aqov Talmon, “Qavim leivh.un hamarkiv hayehudi bahistoria hauniversalit,” in Be’idan haelimut (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1977), 120–142. 58. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, ch. 4. 59. Hyman, The Jews of Modern France, 26–27. 60. See Malino, “The Right to be Equal,” 96.

SIXTEEN

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“A GENERATION OF UPHEAVALS” Euphoria, Terror, and the Rebellion of the Young in the 1790s

The final decade of the Jewish eighteenth century began with the dramatic announcement of the redemption of the Jews in the Hebrew publication Hameasef in Berlin. Three news items that arrived from Paris in the beginning of the winter of 1790 excited the editors, who quickly announced an unparalleled and momentous historical event with enthusiastic exclamation points. Henceforth, “there is no good thing in that country that a Jew cannot enjoy like any other person, and this is the Doctrine of Man!” Before their eyes, they saw the realization of the great promise inherent in this key term in the Jewish Enlightenment, which, since Naphtali Herz Wessely’s manifesto, had contained the core of Haskalah: the acquisition of general human knowledge, the adoption of humanist values, and the waning of prejudice. The National Assembly granted political recognition to the Jews of Bordeaux, which, since the loss of Jewish sovereignty in antiquity, had been denied to the Jews. Now they would be “like any of the people of their country.” The second item reported that fifty Jewish patriots had demonstrated their loyalty to the revolution by going to the assembly wearing “hats with the ribbon of liberty” (cocardes). The third item spoke of a thousand Jews who had enlisted “in the army of the French nation to stand by them against their enemies.” This “voice proclaiming salvation and redemption for our brethren the children of Israel” proved that improvement in the status of the Jews was the fruit of the Enlightenment. The political breakthrough in France was the beginning of the end of the foreignness and exclusion of the Jews. “Understand this, all our brethren, the children of Israel, in every place where you dwell,” editor Isaac Euchel wrote, “and know that with the ascent of wisdom your honor will also ascend.”1

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“In Pa r is Peopl e R a ised th e S wor d aga inst Th eir Fellows”: Bet w e en E m a ncipation a n d a Bloodbath While these declarations were exaggerated and messianic in character, for the Sephardi Jews of Bordeaux, 1790 began with a great success. The delegation that reached Paris in early January convinced many in the National Assembly to accept their request to recognize their special rights, which antedated the revolution, as a sufficient basis for unconditional citizenship. Mutual suspicion marred the meetings with other Jews, which they held in the home of Cerf Berr for the purpose of reaching an agreement about joint representation. In the end, the emissaries from Bordeaux decided to separate their interests from those of the Ashkenazim. Within four weeks, the National Assembly held a vote on their request. At the meeting of January 28, 1790, they were represented by one of the most prominent and powerful delegates, the Duke and Bishop of Auton in Burgandy, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. In the name of the constitutional committee, he supported their petition to ratify their longestablished rights. At the end of the deliberations, almost two-thirds of the delegates—374 people—voted in favor of granting active citizenship to the Spanish and Portuguese Jews and those living in the former papal districts of Avignon.2 Hameasef ignored the division between the Jewish ethnic groups and emphasized the unprecedented achievement of the naturalization law. However, the newspaper published in Metz by Spire did not conceal the feeling of deep indignation because the decision left out the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine. In his opinion, “for the Jews in other districts this was shameful.”3 The resolution gave preference to the Sephardi Jews and split the Jews of France, as it affected fewer than 10 percent of them (about 3,500, including about 2,000 Jews of Bordeaux). Enthusiasm for Jewish patriotism and conscription in the National Guard ignored the vehement opposition to the inclusion of Jews in responsibility for public security in the eastern districts.4 Citizenship of the Jews was one of the principled questions laid before the revolutionaries. In that year, while the revolution rolled on tumultuously, great disagreement arose regarding its very justification. The most penetrating and resounding warning signal was issued in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (November 1, 1790), which called on the enthusiastic supporters of the revolution in England to examine the dreadful cost of radical liberty. Burke, a contemporary of Mendelssohn’s, a native of Ireland, and a member of the British Parliament for the Whig Party, had favored the independence of the American colonies.

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Thus, he surprised public opinion when he wrote, “Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars? to be commemorated with grateful thanksgiving? to be offered to the divine humanity with fervent prayer and enthusiastic exclamation?” Rather, he argued that the wild events across the Channel were deteriorating into a grave crisis. In the name of the idea of liberty, “a madman . . . has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell.” Unbridled liberty would critically injure the institutions of government, impair stability, and undermine religion and morality, tranquility, and order. Therefore, “I should suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France.” Burke, known as one of the fathers of political conservatism, lauded the English system of government, which was based on compromise, prevented hasty decisions, and assured moderation, and he condemned radical reforms. He was afraid of the abandonment of Christianity, which was the basis of civilization, and of slandering clergymen, and he warned against the incited mob, which had taken control of the National Assembly so thoroughly that one could not tell the hall from the visitors’ gallery. There was no justification for the injustice that had been done to the king and his family. In the name of humanity, he wrote that “such treatment of any human creatures must be shocking to anyone who isn’t made for accomplishing revolutions,” and he defined it as “the patriotic crimes of an enlightened age.” Was there, then, a reason for enthusiasm? Burke asserts cynically that he was not “illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung modern ‘light.’” With venom that played upon the cords of suspicion and hostility, he hinted at the “Jewish” character of the revolution and argued that those who profited most from it were the Jews. Burke claimed that a revolutionary situation had almost developed in England, since Lord Gordon was imprisoned in Newgate both because of the violent riots he incited and because he dared to slander the queen of France. “In this spiritual retreat, let the noble libeler remain. Let him there meditate on his Talmud until he learns a conduct more becoming his birth and parts.” Burke hammered at the aristocrat who had converted to Judaism, adding a sarcastic proposal, which, in discussing the citizenship of the Jews, the revolutionaries in France ought to consider—that “some persons from your side of the water, to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him.” Then, this “Protestant rabbin,” may “be enabled to purchase with the old boards of the synagogue and a very small poundage on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces of silver . . . the lands which are lately discovered to have been usurped by the Gallican church.”5 A few days after the fall of the Bastille, Gordon did ask the National Assembly to help release him, and in one of his letters, he quoted the petition of the Jews of Paris as evidence of patriotism and willingness to sacrifice themselves

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for the glory of the nation.6 Meanwhile, Burke’s book aroused vehement discussion in Britain. One of the strongest voices of opposition was that of the indefatigable revolutionary Thomas Paine, who had returned to London from America and published The Rights of Man there in 1791. In the introduction to his book, he wrote to George Washington that he would certainly be pleased to see how the New World was awakening the Old World, and how the principles of liberty, to whose realization Washington had contributed, had become universal. Paine attacked Burke for pandering to the aristocracy and showing mercy for the queen but ignoring those who had truly suffered in the dungeons of the Bastille. It was no longer possible to rule over people by power and cunning. The age of progress had come, and governments acquired by inheritance were giving way to governments that represented the people.7 Because of his uncompromising opposition to monarchy, Paine was tried for slander in absentia, but meanwhile he was already at the focus of events in Paris. There he met the radical intellectual Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), a woman in her thirties whom he had already been acquainted with in London among liberal and cosmopolitan writers and artists. In less than a month, she had published the first response to Burke, entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Man. With fury, she attacked his defense of the privileged classes and the tyrannical government that ignored the suffering of the masses. She was particularly galled by Burke’s identification with the fate of Marie Antoinette, who, in her eyes, was a decadent aristocrat. It would have been far more worthy to have mercy on the women and children who lived in constant misery.8 A Prussian contemporary of Wollstonecraft, Dorothea Mendelssohn, would have identified with all her words. In a personal letter, she wrote that she completely understood the French and was amazed that “an entire nation, all at once, could rebel against hedonistic tyrants,” the “cursed aristocracy” of Europe, which closed its ears to the outcry rising from the miserable houses of the poor.9 Two years later, Wollstonecraft made women’s liberty a test case for the advocates of revolutionary principles. Her famous book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), found thousands of readers and still reverberated more than two centuries after its publication in London. In the name of reason, justice, and liberty, in this pioneering feminist work, she demanded that women be regarded as rational beings and receive a proper education: “I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body.” They should attain independence, and it should be recognized that they were not “formed only to please, and be subject to man.” Despite men’s physical superiority, Wollstonecraft conceded that she had a dream: “I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the

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behaviour.”10 In Paris, where she went to experience the revolution from close up, she was preceded by the feminist voice of Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793), the daughter of a butcher from southern France who became a combative public figure. To counter the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, on September 14, 1791, she sent a document to the National Assembly, asking for its adoption: The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. Her style was much coarser than Wollstonecraft’s (“You, man. . . . Who gave you supreme power to oppress my sex?”). The first article demanded emancipation: “Woman was born free and remains equal to men in her rights.”11 These two women did not live to see their dream fulfilled. Wollstonecraft witnessed the radicalization of the revolution and the execution of political rivals and those suspected of disloyalty. De Gouges herself was a victim of the revolution. She was executed, among other things, because she advocated sparing the king’s life. In parallel with the women’s demands, there were also calls for granting citizenship to free Blacks in the colonies. Grégoire and Robespierre, who were in favor of Jewish emancipation, also pointed out the injustice of racial discrimination. Ultimately, after the slave rebellion in the colony of San Domingo, slavery was abolished (February 4, 1794). Revolutionary discourse on rights became the measure of equality in relation to women, Blacks, and non-Catholics, including Jews.12 Wollstonecraft dedicated her book on the rights of women to Talleyrand, who had fought for the Jews of Bordeaux. She wrote to him, saying that in the revolutionary situation in which men struggled for liberty, the continued oppression of women, who lacked civil or political rights, contradicted justice and reason. In the closing sentence of her book, she used a biblical image for the plight of women, comparing it to that of the Israelites oppressed in Egypt: “Be just then, O ye men of understanding! And mark not more severely what women do amiss . . . and allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of reason, or ye will be worse than Egyptian task-masters, expecting virtue where nature has not given understanding!”13 The barrier was broken for the Ashkenazi Jews of France after a year and a half of postponements and the thwarting of their lobbying efforts. A majority of the National Assembly voted on September 27 and 28, 1791, in favor of a law making possible the naturalization of the Jews of France. After the adoption of the constitution earlier in the month, segregation of the Jews was no longer conceivable, explained jurist Adrien Duport (1759–1798), who presented the proposal. “It is impossible to deny permission to enjoy rights only to the Jews, while Pagans, Turks, Muslims, Chinese—in other words, people of every sect—enjoyed those rights.” Now anyone opposing emancipation also opposed the constitution. In the perspective of the evolution of the Jewish question

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from the first discourse on tolerance in the early Enlightenment, and also in comparison to Joseph II’s reforms, the French law of citizenship had primary and special importance. The conditions that arose in the first discussions finally entered the wording of the law. The state no longer regarded the Jews as a group or a community, but only as individuals who would receive citizenship after pledging allegiance and thereby declaring that they forfeited the privileges that hitherto had been the juridical basis of their presence in France.14 The drawing of conclusions from the principle of human rights and this personal conception of citizenship, placing every single individual in relation to the state, were decisive political expressions of the empowerment of the individual in the eighteenth century. People’s fate was not determined in advance because they were born in a certain group, social class, or religion. Berr Isaac Berr, prominent within the lobby for emancipation, was the first to greet the law with enthusiasm, hearing the footsteps of the messiah in it. He gave his proclamation a title appropriate to the spirit of the law, “Lettre d’un Citoyen” (“Letter of a Citizen”), imploring his brethren to accept the conception of individual citizenship and attributing fateful significance in Jewish history to the law of 1791. The years of Exile were over. Finally the rights the Jews had been deprived of eighteen hundred years earlier were restored. We must thank God, he wrote, that we are not only human beings, but also French citizens. The date of September 28 would be remembered for generations as the holy day when they went from being humiliated slaves to being happy. Berr identified with the Enlightenment and had translated Wessely’s Divrei shalom veemet. Like Wessely, he believed in the historical turning point of the New Age, and now he had been privileged to witness its realization with his own eyes. In this exciting and foundational moment, the French Maskil explained the political achievement to himself and to his brethren as a gift from divine providence. As Jay Berkovitz has noted, in an apparent inner contradiction, Berr characterized the civil status that had just been attained in religious terms. France was an emissary of God, and “He chose the generous French nation and King Louis XVI to restore our rights and effect our regeneration.” Whereas Antiochus and Pompey were chosen to subjugate and enslave, France was chosen to liberate. Later on, the Jews of France came to realize that the law of emancipation was not the end of the matter. During the Reign of Terror, persecution of religion became more extreme, and under Napoleon, an involuntary communal framework was forced on the Jews. At that moment, in the autumn of 1791, the “citizen” was apprehensive about disintegration of the community and secularization, which would find expression in abandonment of religious obligations. He proposed a complex challenge: on the one hand, demonstration of patriotism by strengthening the

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effort at the modernization of education and the ways of earning a living, as well as by adoption of the French language; on the other hand, the reestablishment of a group identity within new communal and religious frameworks, that would henceforth be built on the basis of choice.15 In contrast to the heartwarming proclamations of loyalty to the most exalted humanistic principles, the events of the revolution in the 1790s were bathed in blood. The authority to use force passed rapidly from hand to hand, and political disputes were resolved beneath the slashing blade of the guillotine. In the name of liberty and patriotism—and under the threatening slogan The state is in danger!—a domestic attack was launched against the Church, supporters of the monarchy, and people suspected of insufficient loyalty, even among the early leaders of the revolution. Meanwhile, from without, wars began that were to claim many victims on the battlefield in the next two decades. Bishops who were persecuted and refused to swear allegiance, army officers who deserted, and aristocrats who feared for their lives all fled from France. The emigres expected the countries of Europe to restore legitimate order. Katherine II placed herself at the front in one of her last letters: “I am preaching and shall continue to preach the common cause of all kings against the destroyers of thrones and of society.” In their distress, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette sent desperate appeals for intervention to the rulers of Austria, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Spain. The royal family’s failed effort to escape on the night of July 20, 1791, confirmed suspicion that they were enemies of the revolution, and they in fact became prisoners. The Austrian emperor and the king of Prussia agreed to work together. About a year later, France declared war against Austria, and in the autumn of 1792, battles began between the armies of the monarchical powers of Europe and the patriotic citizens’ army, sworn to defend the nation-state against invasion. After early failures came the surprising victory over the Prussian army at Valmy in northeastern France on September 20, 1792, bolstering the self-confidence of the revolutionaries. About two months later, parts of the left bank of the Rhine were captured. Goethe, who accompanied the German armies, described the shock at the defeat of the professional army by the citizens’ army. On that evening, he told the soldiers, “in this place, on this day, a new age has begun in world history, and you can all tell that you witnessed its birth.” After another two months, France proclaimed its mission to achieve a new order in Europe, to overthrow monarchical rule, and to assist every nation in attaining liberty.16 While the Jewish patriot from Alsace, Berr Isaac Berr, pinned messianic hopes on the revolution, his contemporary from Moravia, Abraham Trebitsch, wrote the history of the times with great dread (“the land erupted and

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thundered”) because of the unprecedented upset of order in the world. In his view, this was the worst possible period for kings. Joseph II, the tireless promoter of reform, died after only ten years on the throne. His brother, Leopold II (1747–1792), who succeeded him, did not live long. In the spring of 1792, at the age of twenty-four, his son Franz II (1768–1835) was already crowned—the last of the Holy Roman emperors. Stanisław Poniatowski was close to the end of his role as the last king of Poland, before the Third (and final) Partition and the loss of Polish independence. The king of Sweden, Gustav III (1746–1792), was assassinated at a ball in the opera of Stockholm. However, bitterest of all, in Trebitsch’s view, was the fate of citizen Louis Capet and his young family. The restrictions on their liberty and their ultimate execution expressed revolutionary extremism. In Trebitsch’s version of the story, the victor was not liberty, but rather corrupt rebels, “rulers of the regime of wickedness,” who triumphed and dared to destroy both the monarchy and religious faith. Like Burke, he pitied Louis XVI, imprisoned “in chains like a miscreant, and his wife, cursed like a wanton wench.” Thus, the formation of the coalition against France was timely, especially because Marie Antoinette belonged to the family of the emperor in Vienna, whose duty it was to save her. There was no doubt who was responsible for dragging Europe into a great conflict: “France, why did you break out against us?” Trebitsch wrote angrily. “Is making war sweet to your heart?”17 Execution of the king further strengthened resolve to suppress the revolution with military force. The Jewish chronicler, a supporter of the monarchy, was flabbergasted. When he had to describe that horror, which took place on the morning of January 21, 1793, in Paris, the pen fell from his hand. He could only lament the young life that was cut short: “Ludvig your life’s taking, like the sea your breaking, who can help?” In the German version of the chronicle, Trebitsch presented his readers with an eight-page translation of Louis XVI’s testament, in which he expressed forgiveness for those who had betrayed him and asked pardon from his wife for the suffering and sorrow he had caused her.18 In Trebitsch’s opinion, the year 5554 (1793/1794) was one in which France ought to have been ashamed of herself. Introduction of a calendar that renumbered the years from zero, the year of the establishment of the republic (“this too is the opinion of the French, they make new calendars for themselves, numbering the years of their liberty”), was a scandal, and the division of the month into ten-day weeks was rebellion against religion and the account in the Bible. Ten months later (October 16, 1793), the revolutionaries arose and committed another infraction: “They also killed the queen with cruelty, she was Marie Antoinette, a princess from the Austrian dynasty, the noble daughter of Queen Maria Theresa, and they were insolent to everyone.”19 For Trebitsch,

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the humiliation and murder of the king and queen were the most grievous expression of the moral depravity to which the Revolution had degenerated. Jewish enlistment in the war effort influenced more than ever their identification as Austrian or Prussian subjects or French citizens. The wealthy Jewish elite in Bohemia and Moravia contributed generously to fund the war, both from the community treasury and from their own pockets, to help the emperor’s army. The Jews there sighed with relief when their apprehension about being conscripted, by virtue of Joseph II’s instructions, was allayed, as they were given the possibility of paying a forfeit instead of serving in the army. On the other side, Cerf Berr’s son Max purchased supplies for the military storehouses in various seaports, and H.aim Worms supplied the army with food and uniforms in the forts along the Rhine, facing the Austrian army. Prominent among the dozens of suppliers during the first two years of the war was Jacob Benjamin of Paris, who won contracts for vast sums to equip the soldiers (he provided such supplies as pickled beef and pork, horses, tobacco, socks, and shoes), enabling success on the battlefield and maintaining the dynamic of the revolution. Like many of his predecessors from the beginning of the century, he also had to defend himself against accusations of corruption and theft. In the end, he was acquitted. During his trial and in the efforts to exonerate him, it emerged how he had built a large logistical system with many agents and purchasers and how he had succeeded in conveying merchandise to army units scattered over various fronts. Ronald Schechter has written about this figure, who played such a central role behind the scenes of the war, noting that immediately after passage of the emancipation law, the state placed great responsibility in the hands of a Jew, and not even the accusations leveled against him were anti-Jewish in character. Rather than “the Jew Benjamin,” he was “Citizen Benjamin.”20 Political loyalties were divided among the Jews. In the beginning of the revolution, special morning prayers for the safety of the royal family were recited among the Jews in the little villages of Alsace, “to establish law and justice in the land.” After the execution of the king, a pamphlet was printed in Prague, in German in Hebrew letters, describing his trial and execution, condemning the revolutionaries, and presenting Louis XVI as a martyr. In contrast, the members of the Metz community held a patriotic religious ceremony to celebrate one of France’s achievements against the army of the coalition. The lifting of the siege on Thinoville, a small city on the Moselle in northeastern France on October 16, 1792, which had been imposed by an army of 36,000 Austrian and émigré monarchist French soldiers, was a landmark in blocking the invaders, who sought to turn back the course of events. Moses Ensheim wrote a poem of victory for the impressive ceremony in the Metz synagogue on October 21,

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1792. After the rabbi’s sermon, they sang his Hebrew rhymes to the tune of “La Marseillaise.” France was “our homeland,” the leaders of the old regime were “the kingdom of evil,” and their downfall, like the collapse of the Babylonian Empire, made freedom possible. The enemies of France were “robbers” who sought “to make us into slaves.” Ensheim’s lines, translated into French by Isaiah Berr Bing, encouraged the soldiers to defeat the army of the despots: “Arise, you volunteers among the people, be strong and be men, you have a sword, the sword of vengeance, the sword of the free and equal.”21 On the other side, in the community of Breslau, the Jews identified with Prussia’s aspiration to wipe out the revolution. A special prayer, composed in 1794 and published in Hameasef, hoped for Prussian victory over France and supported King Friedrich Wilhelm II in making war, “for his heart was filled to stand in the breach against the sect of destroyers and spoilers of nation and country, in violating every religion and judgment, law and justice.” The revolutionaries were wicked, and the king’s just purpose was to retore order and peace and “quickly [to remove] the kingdom of evil from the earth, and to turn the heart of the evildoers and rebels to abandon their way.”22 Immanuel Kant expressed the feelings of many people when he published his philosophical utopian work, Perpetual Peace. In it, he condemned war and proposed “citizenship of the world,” human cooperation in a “federalism of free states.”23 Josel Lehman, an involuntary soldier, composed a personal and intimate testimony devoid of any ideology or patriotic rhetoric and giving special insight into the feelings of the Jews in the midst of the revolution and the heart of the war. Lehman was a teacher and God-fearing writer. Punctilious in observing Halakha, he lived in the small community of Bollweiler, in northeastern France. He was conscripted and took part in the battle against the soldiers of Prussia and Austria on the Rhine. During the ten days of repentance, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur of 5554 (1793), an order was issued from Strasbourg and Colmar; “the bells rang in their houses of prayer for two days,” announcing that on Friday (September 13, 1793), only three days before Yom Kippur, every man from the age of twenty-five to forty-five must report to join in stopping the enemies of France. This was actually the second conscription, as unmarried men from the age of fifteen to twenty-five had already been enlisted two weeks earlier. After the law of emancipation, no distinction was made in conscripting soldiers; they were called to duty “whether circumcised or uncircumcised.” This was an existential trial for Lehman and the members of this community; the edict spoiled the High Holidays: “When the rumor came to us, both our ears rang, and we were in mourning and sorrow, for we were frightened lest this might come before Yom Kippur, lest, on that holy day, we might be at the place

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of conscription, and we might be unable to worship our God.” Fresh French citizenship did not blur the gap between Jews and Christians or the boundary between the place of the Jews and that of the gentiles. As usual in times of crisis, “we agreed, here in Bollweiler, to gather in the synagogue after noon to recite the whole Book of Psalms and to fast until the night.” Lehman joined the convoy of conscripts that left the village “with weeping, walking onward with crying and great sadness,” to the temporary encampment that had been set up in the forest. In the midst of Yom Kippur prayers, they were summoned to prepare for battle. The following day, he was already taking part in a battle in the prolonged war on the border: “The Germans sent their arrows from across the Rhine River into our country, and we, that is the men of our army, sent our arrows at the Rhine River so that we could cross on foot there, and we were fearful with great dread.” At ten o’clock, they were told to start moving toward the river. Fortunately, they were not placed in the spearhead of the attack and were not endangered like people from the other villages. Within a few days, the Prussian attempt to cross the river was thwarted. “For the Lord foiled their plan and spoiled their deeds,” Lehman wrote with satisfaction, “and they could not make a bridge because of the many arrows that came upon them from across the Rhine River from the Germans, and three boats full of soldiers sank in the river, and many of them died from the arrows that fell on them.” The Prussian failure meant salvation for Yosl Lehman and his brothers. They were sent back to a village where Jews lived and where they could be hosted to celebrate Sukkot. The severe trial of a soldier who was tormented by worry, had slept on the wet earth, and had even suffered from a toothache had ended, and after Sukkot, “the order came for everyone to return to his home.” Many Jews served in the army and the National Guard, and no doubt there were many patriots among them. But the testimony that Lehman wrote in gratitude for the miracles and wonders that took place for him expressed the feelings of those for whom the revolution was a great misfortune, brutally invading their world, endangering them, and disrupting their religious life.24 These were the first days of the Reign of Terror (September 1793–July 1794). The court established by the radicals made total war against the “traitors,” who were condemned as “enemies of the people.” Along with those killed on the battlefield, many people perished in a kind of civil war, in which civilian blood was shed. The victims included members of the original core group of revolutionary leaders. Trebitsch described the chaos: “At that time, in those days, in Paris people raised the sword against their fellows.”25 The state exerted organized violence against its citizens to arouse fear that would assure absolute fidelity and help eliminate opponents, an expanding group, ranging

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from aristocrats and priests to those who were informed on by spies as sullying the tree of liberty, who expressed themselves against the republic, or who did not show sufficient enthusiasm in national ceremonies. For almost a year during the Reign of Terror, the democratic constitution was suspended under the pretext of domestic and foreign emergency. The Law of Suspects (October 10, 1794) revoked proper judicial procedure and made it possible to convict without evidence. Members of the Jacobin political club, who held the reins of government, believed that by employing violence they were guaranteeing the existence of the republic and the citizens’ moral purity. The civil religion, which worshipped the deist god of “the supreme being” and the symbols of the revolution, demanded total commitment and the abandonment—forced, if necessary—of Christian and Jewish rites.26 The Committee of Public Safety acted as a small government with extended powers. More than anyone, Robespierre stood out as the leader entirely identified with the revolution and the Reign of Terror. Within a few years, he had risen from being a young provincial lawyer from Arras, in the north of the country, to serving as a delegate in the National Assembly and then as a central politician who piloted the revolution according to his own far-reaching ambitions. Robespierre, who devoted his life to protecting the destitute and promoting equality, liberty, and moral virtues, was swept by the dynamics of the revolution to the radical peak of the Reign of Terror, which ultimately consumed him as well. His biographer, Ruth Scurr, maintained that his devotion to revolutionary purity reached the level of true insanity. On the one hand, he was ambitious and focused on himself, like the absolute individualists of the eighteenth century, who sought with all their might to make their mark on history, and he was an enlightened idealist who implored the king, even before the revolution, to lead humanity to happiness by means of virtue. On the other hand, he was a powerful politician imbued with a feeling of mission and self-sacrifice, and he believed that he was a tool of Providence to bring France to an exalted future. The same Robespierre who is identified with the Reign of Terror pressed for the naturalization of the Jews. His speech in defense of Jewish emancipation already manifests the severe and doctrinaire approach that guided him when it was a question of executing the king and queen or Danton and his colleagues. No human power could deny the Jews their “eternal rights as humans and citizens,” he said. “We will return them to happiness, to the homeland, and to moral virtues,” and, since this was a matter of principle for the revolution, there was no room for exceptions.27 During the Reign of Terror, the persecution of religion became extreme in France. The primary target was the Catholic Church, though the Jews were also

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injured—mortally, in many cases. The sweeping prohibition against religious ritual, including observance of the Sabbath, ritual slaughter, and circumcision, the closing of synagogues, and the dispersal of yeshivas led to a crisis unprecedented in the modern age. The government, which had just passed a liberal constitution and granted liberty and equality to the Jews, now saw religious ritual as a competitor, and those loyal to the religion were suspected of insufficient loyalty to the republic. As Berkovitz wrote: “During the Reign of Terror the situation deteriorated dramatically. The kehillah fell into a state of disorder, while many who observed Jewish rituals openly became the victims of a general assault on established religions.” The lives of the rabbis of Alsace were endangered. For example, Rabbi Simon Horchheim almost became a martyr on the altar of Sabbath observance: “At that time the Frenchman Robespierre decreed that the Jews must not observe the Sabbath, and that anyone who did not obey this edict would be condemned to death. But the aforementioned zaddik did not care about death and was willing to sacrifice himself for observing the Sabbath in his way. Because of this he was seized by policemen and taken up to the guillotine to cut off his head.” Fortunately for him, the Reign of Terror came to an end, “and at the time when he had prepared his soul to be sacrificed to sanctify the Name, the order came from the Assembly in Paris to revoke Robespierre’s edict, because he was executed for his evil deeds.” Rabbi Abraham Luntschitz reported about the great misery in his life when he was arrested for two dreadful weeks because he would not forgo Torah study. The rabbi described the consequences of the revolution for his life: “When a man, an evil beast, rose up against us, the riots came in the kingdom of France that was in our day, several mortal dangers came upon my head, and all the money and riches of the house of my ancestors was finished, and I was put in prison for studying the Torah and obeying the instructions of the rabbinate, from the day of 25 Tammuz 5554 to the day of 9 Av, at that time every single moment was one of fury, may the Merciful One preserve us.”28 Zosa Szajkowski, the prolific historian of the Jews of France at the time of the revolution, documented dozens of cases of intentional attack. The Strasbourg municipal council proclaimed that Jewish ritual slaughter was a superstition (December 2, 1793), and a month later, it ordered the closure of all the synagogues. The Jacobin Club of Saint Esprit, many of whose members were Jews, decided to confiscate all the Sabbath candlesticks and to forbid the wearing of Sabbath clothes. In his journal, Josel Lehman reported that in Alsace, it was forbidden to observe the Sabbath, and Jews were humiliated by having their beards and earlocks cut. In Haguenau, the Passover Seder was held in hiding. Many communities were required to contribute valuable ritual objects

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voluntarily. Rabbi Attias of Bordeaux was put under house arrest after he was suspected of disloyalty and failing to properly preach sermons in praise of the revolution. In the atmosphere of threat and coercion, rabbis sometimes issued radical declarations of secular conversion, such as that of Rabbi Shlomo Hess of Paris, which was published as a pamphlet on November 10, 1793: “We have no god other than liberty and no faith other than equality.” In Carpentras, the keys to the synagogue were presented to the municipal authorities, and the heads of the community declared that it was possible to worship God anywhere: “We will all join the temple of reason, in which all human beings are brothers.” With the Thermidor counterrevolution, after Robespierre’s execution by his political enemies, the direction was reversed. The campaign against religion was suspended (February 21, 1795), and efforts were made to renew religious services, to return the ritual objects, and to reopen the synagogues, which had been nationalized. Although Szajkowski saw the steps against Judaism as an echo of the stormy attack against Catholicism, Raphael Mahler pointed out the deep hostility toward Judaism that had permeated that war against religion.29 About 16,000 people were victims of the Reign of Terror, including 2,217 people who were executed in Paris alone, and another half a million people were thrown into prison. Olympe de Gouges, who in 1791 had implored the queen to support the rights of women, also paid with her life for her closeness to the enemies of the Jacobins, and her head was cut off on November 3, 1793, only two weeks after Marie Antoinette was guillotined. Nor did the revolutionary tribunal spare the life of the scientist and talented inventor, Lavoisier (May 8, 1794), as his political rivals did not forget his role in the old regime as a tax collector. Wealthy Jewish tobacco manufacturer Jacob Pereira was a Jacobin activist in Paris who, among other things, demonstrated his devotion to radical ideology by humiliating a Catholic bishop, but in the months of the Reign of Terror, he was executed for subverting the convention and the state. One of the peaks of the Terror, which turned against the revolutionary leaders themselves, was the trial and execution of Georges Danton (1759–1794) and Camille-Benoît Desmoulins (1760–1794) for conspiring against the government and for corruption in the management of the East India Company. Two former Jews, Junius and Emanuel Frey, of Moravia, were also accused, along with their brother-in-law François Chabot, a member of the convention and the husband of their sister Leopoldina (Esther, before her conversion), both of whom were connected with that corruption case. They were all beheaded on the same day (April 5, 1794). Thus ended the short life and multiple identities of the Frankist Moses Ben Zalman Dobruška from the community of Brno. He had converted to Catholicism, taking the name of Thomas von Shönfeld, and

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was apparently intended to succeed his uncle, Jacob Frank, who died in Offenbach on December 10, 1791. Shönfeld had been active in the Asiatic Brethren, which mingled religions. As an adventurer with capital and connections in the higher echelons of the Austrian government in Vienna, he was attracted to the epicenter of the great drama in France, going first to Strasbourg and then to Paris, this time under his new name, Junius Frey. Like de Gouges, Danton, and others, he believed that the revolution was the high point of the century: “My mother’s home is far from here, but my heart throbs and rises to the news of liberty, the greatest and most beautiful word of the eighteenth century, and I was drawn to it and suckled at its breasts.” In his book, Social Philosophy, he argued that the highest goal of human society was to provide happiness for every individual. At his trial, his brother Emanuel testified, “I came to enjoy the liberty promised by the French.” Those who informed against them knew about their changes of identity and were not impressed by their support for the republic and the Jacobins. They claimed that the brothers were Austrian spies with no moral backbone and were only pretending to be patriots: “They are Jews by birth, and, being ambitious to obtain titles of nobility, they converted to Christianity.”30 Less than three months later, Robespierre fell victim to a political plot hatched against him and also was killed by the guillotine, and in the summer of 1794, the Reign of Terror collapsed. Trebitsch, whose Hebrew chronicle enables us to follow the course of the revolution through conservative Jewish eyes, did not conceal his disgust and revulsion for the golem that had risen up against its makers: “They condemned to death thirty of the ministers of the Convention, who were suspicious in their eyes, for plotting with their opponents. Most of them were implicated in destroying their monarchs, their hands were the first to be raised against their lords, and now they received their just deserts, the insulters were insulted, and the crucifiers were crucified.” However, he could not avoid finishing the account of the tumultuous and earthshaking year of 5554 without expressing admiration for the French and their determination, which commanded respect. “Although the people of France saw themselves in their misery,” and despite the economic crisis and the political upheavals (“now they have killed Robespierre, the president who rose above them, with many important people accompanying him”), the people of this talented country “went on and succeeded and did not fall from their councils . . . they go and do not weary,” as shown by their successful campaigns of conquest in Italy, Holland, and Germany. The use of new technology (“they invented air balloons and telegraphs”) helped their victories. Indeed, lighter-than-air balloons were used to spy in the battles of 1794, and a visual system of semaphores that preceded the

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electric telegraph was used to send messages between towers.31 Nevertheless, the persecutors of the monarchy, whom he condemned so strongly, became victims themselves, and Trebitsch saw with horror how, under the Reign of Terror, the revolution was devouring its most precious children.

On th e Stage: “I A m a M a n, Sir , Ca ll M e How You Pl e a se.” Less than a month after the fall of the Bastille, Burke realized that the revolution, as an ongoing historical event, was a gigantic theater, captivating enormous attention. Everything else was set aside because of astonishment at the amazing spectacle presented in the neighboring rival country. The British public observed the French actors with wonder as they struggled for liberty without knowing whether to condemn or applaud them. Later in Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke’s heart breaks at the downfall of Louis XVI and his family, and he returns to the theatrical image: “Kings are hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama and become the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the good.” A mixture of feelings of dread and mercy is aroused in the audience: “Some tears might be drawn from me if such a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress whilst I could exult over it in real life.” From that moment on, Burke foresaw that any crime could be justified in this spectacle with the claim that the revolutionaries were considering public welfare. The show trials during the Reign of Terror were carefully staged, and the public executions in the city squares, before many spectators, were scenes of the “guillotine theater.” Patriotic education and threats against political deviance were mingled with what appeared to be sacrificial ceremonies. For example, the anticlerical policy was celebrated with processions like those that took place in Bordeaux (December 10, 1793) in honor of the Cult of Reason, in which the old religions were defamed. Rabbis, priests, and judges represented the old regime. A dwarf was costumed as the pope, and a gigantic Jew leaped over the dwarf’s head. In Strasbourg, actors playing rabbis marched, holding torn copies of the Talmud.32 The plays written in Europe during the 1790s also expressed the issues of the day. The Magic Flute, which gave Mozart eternal fame, was an amusing German opera combining the exotic and mysterious with the rational and ethical. The libretto was written by Emanuel Schikaneder (1751–1812), a popular Viennese author of operas and plays. The action takes place in ancient Egypt, but it is an allegory of the Enlightenment, humane values, and the brotherhood of the

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Freemasons, as well as equality among social classes. The premiere was performed at the Theater auf der Wieden on September 30, 1791, while the French Revolution was at its height. Though it contained no political messages, it was deeply rooted in the optimistic mindset of the Enlightenment and the hope for progress. In Goethe’s Faust, the hero feverishly seeks happiness in the world of spirits. In despair because of the burden of research and his barren life, surrounded by ancient tomes that were being eaten by worms and were covered in the dust of generations, Faust, a scholar, turns to sorcery to revive his soul and discover the secrets of nature. Goethe wrote this powerful, wide-ranging play over many years. The first part was completed in the 1790s, when “Fragment” was published. Faust’s turn to the supernatural signaled the romantic revolt against the Enlightenment, and the effort by the devil, Mephistopheles, to possess Faust’s soul and vanquish God demonstrates the complexity of human nature. Faust also contains a critique of religion and of the clergy. Mephistopheles seduces the pious Margareta with gifts of jewelry, which fall into the hands of a priest, who covets them, and Goethe says, sarcastically, that the church has a marvelous appetite, chewing and swallowing entire countries, but it is never sated. Only the church can digest spoiled property in its holy belly (“The church alone, with ease and health, / My dears, digests ill-gotten wealth.” In response, Faust also refers to the negative image of Jewish depravity: “He lied! For there are other two: / A king can do it, and a Jew!”)33 By contrast, a romantic comedy by Richard Cumberland, The Jew, opened to great success at the Drury Lane theater in London on May 8, 1794. The play was intended to effect a deep social change in the attitude toward the Jews. While it is far from a classic like Faust or The Magic Flute, it was very popular in its time and was performed in Philadelphia and New York in the same year. It was translated into German and other languages and made a mark on public discussion. Exactly forty years after the virtuous Traveler in Lessing’s play, The Jews, and fifteen years after Nathan the Wise, with its advocacy of tolerance, Cumberland’s Jew, Sheva, appeared on stage, and the audience wept and applauded. As mentioned above, the playwright’s earlier play, The Fashionable Lover, had a Jewish character that reinforced the repugnant image of the Jew. Now, however, he changed the Jewish character from top to bottom. A review in the theater section of a London evening paper was enthusiastic. Until then, prejudice against the Jews had been nourished in England mainly by the figure of Shylock, but Cumberland, whose motivation was similar to that of Lessing, had written a play whose hero is the opposite of Shakespeare’s Shylock, entirely a man of exalted virtue. Cumberland has shown us, the critic continued, that

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even in circumstances of cruel persecution, the Jews have produced figures who are a tribute to humanity, and we must be proud that this humane and corrective message is voiced in our land.34 Sheva is a Jew (apparently a Marrano) who fled from the talons of the Inquisition in Spain. He appears in London wearing a long gray robe, with a gray beard and a “Jewish hat” on his head. He is a miserly usurer who cunningly preys upon Christians desperately in need of money. The audience gradually discovers that this is just a mask, which the play seeks to tear off. As in Lessing’s play, the contrast between the negative stereotype and its expectations and Sheva’s exceptionally compassionate and generous behavior arouses shame. First the English merchant Sir Stephen Bertram accuses him, saying that his “tribe” is devoid of virtues, shows no mercy, and is interested only in money. Then we hear criticism from the Marquess Charles Ratcliffe, a younger man, who, in the romantic plot of The Jew, has secretly married his employer’s daughter. It appears that, despite their natural humanity, the people of his country do not refrain from reviling Jews and acting rudely toward them. Sheva himself explains his impossible situation. He says that people see him as Shylock, and he can never refute that. His situation is precarious: “We have no abiding place on earth, no country, no home: every body rails at us, every body flouts us, every body points us out for their maygame and their mockery. How can you expect us to show kindness, when we receive none?” Later we learn than Ratcliffe was the decent Christian who saved Sheva from a violent mob that attacked him in London. Toward the end of the first act, the Jew shouts out the byword of tolerance: “I am a man, sir, call me how you please.” When Ratcliffe wants to call him a Christian, because of his exceptional virtues (“I’ll call you a Christian then”), Sheva declines and answers cynically: “I shall not thank you for that compliment.” He wishes to be accepted as a man, and not as an exceptional Jew. “What has Sheva done to be called a villain?—I am a Jew, what then? Is that a reason none of my tribe should have a sense of pity?” As the play approaches the end, the mask is removed. Sir Bertram himself is ashamed (“Farewell, friend Sheva!—can you forgive me?”) The play proclaims its moral in the fourth act: “We must reform our hearts, and inspire them with candour towards your whole nation.” The figure of Shylock was repaired and rehabilitated by replacing it with that of Sheva: “You must now face the world, and transfer the blush from your cheeks to theirs, whom prejudice had taught to scorn you.” The play openly combats prejudice, and as John Marsden wrote, a play like The Jew became an exercise in engineering a more perfect society. Indeed, a critic who was present at the premiere attributed national significance to it. It was an advantage to England that the play

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was received with such warm applause. But, just as the law of emancipation in France did not put an end to debate about the Jews, here, too, this was not the last word, as shown, for example, by a comparison between Shylock and Sheva that was published in 1797 in a London weekly. The reviewer wrote that Shakespeare was the faithful portrayer on nature, and Shylock truly represented the Jews known to us. Perhaps Cumberland had failed in portraying reality in The Jew, but at least he had lit the flame of humanity. He was worthy of praise for his effort to free the oppressed, as it was possible to be glad that prejudices were disappearing in England. The tension between prejudices, which ostensibly were based on reality, and a vision of the future had not dissipated, nor had the dark shadow of Shylock disappeared.35 In 1794, Melukhat shaul (The Kingdom of Saul), one of first Hebrew plays in the generation following Moses H. ayim Luzzatto, was published. Its author was Joseph Haephrati of Troplowitz (1770–1804), a resident of Prague. He was just twenty-four when he completed his play and brought it to the new printing house that Anton Schmid (1765–1855) had opened in Vienna. By virtue of the imperial license that he received, Vienna then became a center of Hebrew printing, and to a great degree, it served the Haskalah movement, which was then establishing itself beyond the boundaries of Prussia. This Jewish playwright, a private tutor in Prussian Silesia, came from the margins of the Jewish Republic of Letters, but Melukhat shaul was a success, printed in several editions and attracting the attention of literary critics. In contrast to his British parallel, Cumberland, and his realistic and timely play, Haephrati chose to go back to the biblical period and the tragic life of King Saul and his family. However, the reverberations of the revolution and its wars were stronger in it. The work was decidedly modern. Influenced by Shakespeare’s plays, especially Macbeth, Melukhat shaul presented an ancient version of the great drama currently in the news. The play is tempestuous, passionate, and full of intrigues, political rivalries, and family tragedies. Its characters speak in dramatic sentences that end with exclamation points. Like Goethe did in the Walpurgis Night scene in Faust, Haephrati included witches dancing in the middle of the night in Ein Dor. The stage directions are detailed and precise: “One of the Philistines plunges his sword in Jonathan’s heart, making him fall to the ground.” They make the actors move constantly, and the descriptions of the scenery create an atmosphere (e.g., “the witch’s room. The darkness of night, very gloomy. All the walls of the room are covered with black cloth. Two candles burn”) conveying the sharp transitions between royal palaces and bloody battlefields to the reader. There is no evidence that Melukhat shaul was ever performed, but it is of great importance as a historical document, as Haephrati turned the

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familiar Bible story into a decidedly contemporary political play. Saul’s protest to heaven expressed the rebellious spirit of a man who refused to obey God’s commands. Haephrati also promoted the idea of equality among the classes. “For we are men, all carved of clay,” says Saul’s wife, Ahinoam, perhaps alluding to Marie Antoinette with the words, “Joy will not attend us without fear, both nobility and kingship are vanity.” As David explains to Jonathan: “My brother, my brother! You, too, were made of clay, together we are sons of the High One, all of us! You are of the race of kings, I am of little worth—from the same earth we were taken, both of our souls.” Government should be in enlightened hands (“may a rational soul rule the land!”), and a virtuous king does not forget that “the peasant who plows and carves the earth is a man like me.” However, by means of the character of Saul, he also proclaims his support for the monarchy and his absolute opposition to the execution of a king. In the fifth act, after realizing that his kingdom is coming to an end, Saul shouts: “O generation of upheavals!, empty, men of the devil! You have all hatched a plot, my servant betrayed me.” David, who is the author’s spokesman in the play, says emphatically that it would never occur to him to murder a king, chosen by God. This Jewish writer, living in the Austrian Empire, saw the revolution as terrible anarchy, and he cried bitterly: “Has destruction and the end come? Have the cords of creation been severed? Were all the worlds shaken from their foundations?”36 Haephrati’s rejection of confrontations, rebellions, and ruptures also marked a shorter scene, which he presented in Alon bakhut (the tree of weeping, where Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse was buried, Gen. 35:8), an elegy written in the form of a play upon the death of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (1793). Accompanied by a chorus, Landau and Mendelssohn meet in the world of spirits. Although it would appear that in the 1790s, Haskalah was spurring rivals on to a culture war, Haephrati presented a harmonious scene of mutual recognition, which began with a prophetic vision: “Behold, when I was [in Prague] on the Moldau River, the hand of the Lord was upon me, I saw the soul of our lord Ezekiel Halevi soaring before the entrance to the Garden of Eden. The soul of the son of Menah.em [Mendelssohn] appeared before it, and the soul of the rabbi recognized it, and it fell on his neck and they embraced.” To reinforce the words of praise they showered upon one another in a duet, at the beginning of the work, an imaginative drawing appears, showing the late rabbi of Prague hugging and kissing the philosopher from Berlin.37 As though in direct reaction to Haephrati and as evidence of the division of the Maskilim between the moderates, who sought harmony, and the angry revolutionaries, another Hebrew play of the time included a meeting of souls

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between Mendelssohn and an exalted figure from the pantheon of the great men of Judaism over the generations. Aharon Wolfssohn (1756–1835), Euchel’s contemporary and his successor as the editor of Hameasef, published a play entitled Sih.a beerets hah.ayim (Conversation in the World of the Living). In it, Maimonides has waited centuries for Mendelssohn’s ascent to the Garden of Eden. After an introductory scene, in which the soul of Maimonides suffers after a conversation held with an anonymous Polish rabbi whose ignorance, prejudices, and hostility to Haskalah (“for with a stylus of iron and a diamond point [cf. Jer. 17:1], his foolishness is engraved on the tablet of my heart”) were astonishing, a wave of joy floods the heavenly retinue. The angel Michael appears, accompanying Mendelssohn, and he is greeted enthusiastically. The gap in their generations had no significance. Mendelssohn is recognized as the successor of the medieval philosopher and Halakhic authority: “Behold I heard of you with my ears, and my soul yearned for you, and now God has shown me your face (and he fell upon the neck of Moses Ben Menah.em and kissed him).” “I am your brother Moses Ben Maimon the Sephardi . . . for we are brothers, have we not the same mother? Both I and you were born upon the knees of Wisdom.” They were both destined for a mission of repair on the earth, to pave the highway for the Jews against the fanatics and ignoramuses who stood in their way. The unnamed Polish rabbi had been one of Mendelssohn’s rivals during his lifetime. In Wolfssohn’s play, everyone unites against him in revulsion, and he is abashed by his absolute inferiority. The lesson aimed at by this propagandistic play was unequivocal: at least in the historical account, the Maskilic revolution would be crowned with success. Unlike Melukhat shaul, in Wolfssohn’s Sih.a, only a faint echo of the events in France was heard, but the spirit of inner revolution was quite radical. The play set out to undermine the prestige of the rabbinical elite and to present it as an empty vessel, a deviation from the main path of Judaism and from the trends of the new times. “Their sword is a sword of vengeance, drinking the blood of their fury,” wrote Wolfssohn, intensifying the confrontation in an attack included in a poem he wrote in 1794 on “the priests of the people who sit on their seats, guarding futile vanities, sorcery, and idolatry, giving Jacob and Israel over to indignity.” They are represented by the rabbi whose worldview was rejected and defeated. Like Haman in the Book of Esther, “his face fell” after no less than a heavenly tribunal placed its whole weight behind the choice of Moses Ben Menah.em as the successor of Moses Ben Maimon.38 Only a very short time later, Wolfssohn wrote a play that was entirely different. Ostensibly a barbed satire, in fact it was a realistic theatrical portrayal of the dialectic of modernization. As though he had rapidly been disillusioned of the optimism of his earlier play, in Qalut da’at vetsevi’ut (Frivolity and Hypocrisy), he

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penetrated deeply into the tense life of a bourgeois Jewish family in Germany. The Hebrew version of the play, which was explicitly intended to replace Purim comedies in Yiddish with a drama that criticized the flaws of society, was written in 1793, but the version in the spoken Yiddish-German language (each character has his own language) was printed in Breslau three years later and reprinted in Amsterdam in 1798. From the upper realms, Wolfssohn descended to the ground of reality. His family portrait is set in a large urban community in northern Germany in the last decade of the century. Once again the figure of the Polish rabbi appears to be an obstacle to the progress of the Jews of Germany. This time it is represented by Rabbi Josephche, a villain and cunning hypocrite overflowing with lust, sanctimoniously posing as a fearer of heaven while plotting to cheat the family of Rabbi H.enoh and his wife, Teltse, to gain the hand of their daughter, Jettchen. This caricature was merely a peg on which Wolfssohn hung what he identified as the problem of the new generation, which threatened to tear apart the family and proved to be indifferent to the message of the Maskilim. In this regard, the most interesting character in the play is Jettchen, who rebels against her father, who wants to marry her off against her will. She is tempted by the culture of the big city—theater, music, novels—and she is attracted to romantic love. However, the innocent girl easily falls prey to the snares of another cheat, the Baron von Schnaps, who delivers her to the madame of a bordello. Marcus (a Maskilic incarnation of Mordecai, from the Purim play) represents Wolfssohn. He is Jettchen’s uncle, a moderate Maskil, fashionably dressed, speaking good German, who tears the mask from Rabbi Josephche, saves Jettchen from infamy, and reproves her parents for their educational failure. Marcus appears in order to resolve the intergenerational tension and restore balance, which was violated both by religious fanaticism and by acculturation without any ideological backbone, producing a crisis. From within the play, a frustrated educator spoke, and the dialectic, so characteristic in the French Revolution, emerged among people who saw themselves as innovators and pioneers yet became, at least in part, conservative and fearful of social disintegration.39 Wolfssohn was not the first to write a Jewish play in Yiddish and German about the confrontation between the generations. Euchel preceded him by a year. He was, as noted, the founder of the Haskalah movement in the previous decade and the admiring biographer of Mendelssohn. Now he, too, was sunk in pessimism, seeing what seemed to him to be the disintegration of the Jewish family in the revolutionary age. In Reb Henoch, oder: Woss tut me damit? (Rabbi Henoch, or What Can One Do with This?), the waning of the desire for education among the parents’ generation, which is impervious to the sincere heart’s

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desire of their children, leads to widespread rebellion, a life of wild hedonism, moral decline, and the severing of connections with the Jewish family and the religion. The voice of the revolution was sounded in the play by the French teacher Decamft: “I belong to a free nation. . . . We take everything we deserve. I am a sans-culottes with a whole heart, is that not so? I defend my liberty everywhere.” And he is asked, “What’s new in the world? Has Lord Capet been set free? Has he ascended to the seat of government again?” And he answers in French, “Indeed, sir, the guillotine will liberate him soon.” In their Sabbath conversation, the family discusses a report that the French army suffered a defeat. Rabbi Henekh positioned himself against the revolution by stating a principle of the older generation: “In this matter, I have a general rule, which I inherited from my grandfather of blessed memory: whoever wants to innovate [brings disaster down on his head].” Euchel, the Prussian Maskil, makes fun of Decamft, having him say, “A free man like a Frenchman is not concerned about his fellow,” and he portrays him as a drunk, mumbling empty slogans: “Long live liberty! Long live equality!” It seems that not only Prussian patriotism caused him to be suspicious of the revolution. Like Wolfssohn, he erected rather serious warning signs against the Enlightenment revolution, which was voided of its content. Bitter monologues are dispersed in the three acts of this family drama, especially one by Hartwig, the frustrated twenty-two-year-old son who says of himself that after his father locked the doors of Haskalah before him and denied him his dream of acquiring a profession, he fell in with a band of debauched men, “entirely corrupt morally.” Enlightenment appears to have slipped from the grasp of its creators. Haskalah itself and the periodical Hameasef were on the verge of collapse. It is not surprising that these two leaders of the Haskalah movement set their family dramas in the 1790s: Wolfssohn, “in the last decade of the eighteenth century,” and Euchel (according to one of the manuscripts), “at the end of the enlightened century.” Both playwrights expressed their growing concern about the “false Haskalah” of the young people, just a decade younger than they were, as their dreams of establishing a broad Haskalah movement in Europe had not been fulfilled.40 One of the most radical voices that was preserved in real life, not on stage, expressing the depth of secularization and alienation from Jewish identity, was perhaps that of Rahel Levin, the daughter of merchant and banker Marcus Levin of Berlin, in the letters she exchanged with her friend, medical student David Veit. They both rejected observance of the commandments, and, like the members of Rabbi Henoch’s family, Rahel openly violated the prohibitions of the Sabbath, seeing no reason to observe them. David also saw such actions as the rebellious defiance of the young generation. In a letter by

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Rahel from 1795, she describes the burden of Judaism to him: “As if, before I was brought into this world, a superhuman being had carved [my fate] with a knife into my heart.” You are destined to be sensitive and noble and capable of thought, but “I add another things, you will be a Jew, and now your life will slowly bleed to death.” This twenty-four-year-old woman wrote that her Jewishness was the source of all evil in her life. About twenty years were to pass before she converted to Christianity to become Antonia Frederika. She married Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (1785–1858) and severed herself from her Jewish origins.41 The summons to a spiritual accounting, addressed to the younger generation in the cities of Prussia and Austria, appeared somewhat earlier, in Etwas zur Charackteristick der Juden (Something About the Characteristics of Judaism), written in 1793 by Lazarus Bendavid (1762–1832), a philosopher and mathematician from Berlin who lived in Vienna. While Wolfssohn and Euchel still saw Haskalah as the solution, Bendavid proposed dissolving the tension between the generations by sweeping cancellation of the commandments. If the generation of parents who complained about the moral decline of the youth wished to prevent them from converting, they needed to retain “the inner essence of the religion by improving the inner essence of the person.” They should tell their children that the “baseless commandments” were only instituted as a fence to protect the kernel of Judaism, which was “the Torah of Moses in its purity.” In Bendavid’s critical view, in the 1790s, the social and religious rift among the Jews was already visible, and it was possible to map the camps. The parents’ generation was split into conservatives, who clung to the religion with all its superstitions and who were apparently irredeemable, and the decent and moderate people, who were still apprehensive about innovations. The children’s generation was divided between the hedonists, “who neglect the commandments because they oppress them and keep them from surrendering completely to their wild desires,” and those who were faithful to natural religion. Bendavid recommended the way taken by the latter group, to which he himself belonged: Jews who were distant simultaneously from those who observed the commandments and those who denied God, rejecting both a libertine way of life and conversion.42 A powerful sense of a rapidly changing world and of challenges demanding entirely new responses emerges from Bendavid’s essay, in which he reveals what he saw as “the major flaws of the Jewish nation,” calling for liberation from the obligations of Halakha. Rahel Levin saw Judaism as an obstacle standing in the way of happiness, whereas Bendavid saw rejection of the commandments as an essential condition for the members of the new generation to become

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“good citizens and happy people.” Tension between old and new grew during the years of the French Revolution. The theatrical scenes of the 1790s, which were described here, exacerbated the conflicts, inundated people with worry, and offered a vision for the future. Mozart hoped for the victory of light, Cumberland for religious tolerance that would overcome prejudice and include the Jews, and Haephrati for a more egalitarian society and reconciliation between the Maskilim and the rabbis. Wolfssohn and Euchel hoped for the victory of Haskalah and the restraining of the young people, who rebelled against their parents and had lost their sense of morality. In his conservative criticism of the French Revolution and of the generation of young men and women who adopted false Enlightenment values, Euchel became a kind of Jewish Burke. The turmoil of the 1790s led him to reject what he saw as excessive modernization, which threatened to erode Jewish identity.

Note s 1. “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef (Adar 5550 [1790]): 187–188. See Reuven Michael, “Hahaskala betequfat hamapekha hatsarfatit—haqets le ‘haskalat berlin’?” Zion 56 (1991): 275–298; Shmuel Feiner, “Bein hamahapekha hatsarfatit levein temurut be’haskalat berlin,” Zion 57 (1992): 89–92. 2. See Szajkowski, “Mishlah.oteihem shel yehudei bordo el va’adat malzerb (1788) veel haasefa haleumit (1790): te’udot h.adashot letoldot haemantsipatsia shel yehudei tsarfat,” Zion 18 (1953): 45–46; Paula E. Hyman, The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 28–29. 3. Spire, Tsaitung, parashat yitro 5550, 138. 4. See Zosa Szajkowski, “French Jews in the Armed Forces during the Revolution of 1789,” in Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848 (New York: Ktav Publication House, 1970), 554–575. 5. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien (London: Penguin, 1982). See Zeev Sternhell, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); David Nirenberg, AntiJudaism, The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 376–382. 6. See Percy Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1937), ch. 16. 7. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man: Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution (London: Printed for J.S. Jordan, 1791). 8. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1790). 9. See Natalie Neimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013),59–62.

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10. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, ed. Miriam Brody (London: Penguin, [1792] 1992), accessed April 29, 2022, https://www .earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/wollstonecraft1792.pdf. 11. See Joan Wallach Scott, “A Woman Who Has Only Paradoxes to Offer: Olympe de Gouges Claims Rights for Women,” in Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution, ed. Sara E. Melzerand and Leslie W. Rabine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 102–120. 12. See Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), ch. 4; Lynn Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History (Boston: Bedford Books, 1996), 101–131. 13. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 111. 14. See David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, A History Across Five Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), ch. 7; Margaret R. O’Leary, Forging Freedom: The Life of Cerf Berr Médelsheim (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2012), ch. 7. 15. See Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 128– 130; Jay R. Berkovitz, Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 16. Katherine the Great, Selected Letters, trans. and with an introduction and notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 347; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Campaign in France in the Year 1792, trans. Robert Farie (London: Chapman and Hall, 1849), 80–81; T. C. Blanning, The Eighteenth Century: Europe 1688–1815 (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2000), 170–177, 205–208; L. W. Cowie, Eighteenth Century Europe (London: Bell & Hyman, 1963), chs. 17–18; William Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 330–356. 17. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha`itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, pars. 85–100. 18. Ibid., pars. 101–102; Trebitsch, Tsait geshikhte, 91–98. 19. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, pars. 111–112. 20. See ibid., pars. 104, 109; Michael Graetz, “‘Aliyato vesheqia’to shel sapaq hatsava hayehudi: kalkala yehudit be’itot milh.ama,” Zion 56 (1991): 255–274; O’Leary, Forging Freedom, 352–373; Ronald Schechter, “The Trial of Jacob Benjamin, Supplier to the French Army, 1792–1793,” in The Jews of Modern France: Images and Identities, ed. Zvi Jonathan Kaplan and Nadia Malinovich (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 35–61. 21. See “Teh.ina leomra bakhal yom vayom ah.arei tefilat hashah.ar, yasda harav . . . ya’aqel misirents,” Basel 5550; Ya’aqov Shatski, “A yidish vokhenblat in der tsait fun der frantsoizisher revolutsia,” YIVO Bletter 2 (1931): 71–72; Moses Ensheim, Lamenatse’ah. shir . . . hushar beyom gavra yad yoshvei erets moladetenu ‘al kol oiveinu misaviv (Metz: Unknown, 1792); Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, ch. 4;

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Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 187–193; Ronald Schechter, “Translating the ῾Marseillaise’: Biblical Republicanism and the Emancipation of Jews in Revolutionary France,” Past and Present 143 (May 1994): 108–135. 22. “Tefila asher hitpalelu ah.einu ‘adat yoshvei bresloya,” Hameasef 7, no. 2 (1792): 98–103; Yoel Bril, “Tefila asher hitpalelu ah.einu yoshvei artsenu, ah.arei shuv malkenu beshalom min hamilh.ama, vekarat brit ‘im mamlekhet tsarfat,” Hameasef 7, no. 3 (1796): 183–186. 23. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795), accessed April 30, 2022, https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm. 24. See M. Ginsburger, “Aus der Zeit der Revolutionskriege,” Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden: Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstage Martin Philippson (Breslau: G. Fock, 1916), 257–266; Szajkowski, “French Jews in the Armed Forces during the Revolution of 1789,” 554–575. 25. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, pars. 113–114. 26. See Daniel Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror (London: Penguin, 1989). 27. See Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (London: Vintage, 2007); Colin Jones, The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 28. See Berkovitz, Rites and Passages, 111. Documents on Rabbi Horchheim, see Hirz Sheyer, Torei Zahav (Mainz: Bril, 1875), 175; documents on Rabbi Luntschitz, see Avraham Yitsh.aq Luntschitz, Kelilat yofi (RÖdelheim, 1813), 30, 71. 29. See the three articles by Szajkowski: “The Attitude of French Jacobins toward Jewish Religion,” in Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, 399–412; “Jewish Religious Observance during the French Revolution of 1789,” in Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, 785–808; and “Synagogues during the French Revolution of 1789–1800,” in Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, 809–822. 30. See Scurr, Fatal Purity, 1–3, 274–325; Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789– 1795, trans. Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 254–259; See Szajkowski, “French Jews in the Armed Forces during the Revolution of 1789,” 458–459; Gershom Scholem, “Qariera shel frankist: moshe dobrushka vegilgulav,” in Meh.qarim umeqorot letoldot hashabtaut vegilguleiha (Tel Aviv: The Bialik Institute, 1991), 141–209; Fritz Heymann, “Das Schicksal der Brüder Frey,” Vossische Zeitung (June 17, 1928); Susanne Wölfle-Fischer, Junius Frey (1753–1794): Jude, Aristokrat und Revolutionär (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997); Silvana Greco, “Heresy, Apostasy and the Beginnings of Social Philosophy: Moses Dobrushka Reconsidered,” Materia Giudaica 20–21 (2015–2016): 439–464. 31. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, pars. 113–119. 32. See Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 13, 175–176; Szajkowski, “The Attitude of French Jacobins Toward Jewish Religion,” 410; Mona Ozouf,

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Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 33. Goethe, Faust: A Drama, trans. Lord Francis Leveson Gower (London: John Murray, 1823), 165. 34. St. James’ Chronicle, or British Evening Post, May 8–10, 1794. 35. Richard Cumberland, The Jew: A Comedy (London: Printed for C. Dilly, 1794). More than eighty years later, a Hebrew translation of the play was published: Ish yehudi, trans. Yosef Brill (Vilna: Yehudah Lifman, 1878). See Jean L. Marsden, “Richard Cumberland’s The Jew and the Benevolence of the Audience: Performing and Religious Tolerance,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 48, no. 4 (2015): 457–477; Louis I. Newman, Richard Cumberland: Critic and Friend of Jews (New York: Bloch, 1919); Michael Ragussis, Theatrical Nation: Jews and Other Outlandish Englishemen in Georgian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 107–117; “Observations and Strictures on the Characters of Shylock and Sheva,” The Monthly Visitor: And Entertaining Pocket Companion 1 (1797): 49–55. 36. Joseph Haephrati of Troplovitz, Melukhat shaul, hamelekh harishon ‘al Yeshurun (Vienna: Anton Schmid, 1793). See the modern edition, ed. Gershon Shaked (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1969), from which the quotations are taken. See Shmuel Werses, “Mih.ilufei lashon leh.ilufei mashma’ut: hamah.aze ‘malkhut shaul’ betirgumo leyidish,” H.uliot 6 (2000): 55–78. 37. Joseph Haephrati of Troplovitz, Alon bakhot (Vienna: Anton Schmid, 1793). 38. Aaron Wolfssohn, “Sih.a beerets hah.ayim,” Hameasef 7 (1794–1797), 53–67, 120–125, 203–228, 279–298. Quotations taken from the edition by Yehuda Friedlander, Peraqim besatira ha’ivrit beshalhei hameah hayod-h.et begermania (Tel Aviv: Papirus, 1979), 145–200; Wolfssohn, “’Al yom huledet heh.akham r’ david fridlender,” Hameasef 7 (1794–1797): 14–19. See Josl Reichenau, “Mihakhanat beit halimud villelhelms shule lena’arei beit yisrael ba’ir bresloya,” Hameasef 7, no. 1 (1794): 68–74. 39. Wolfssohn, Qalut da’at utsevi’ut [R’ Henoch and R’ Yosefkhi], introduction, Dan Meron (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1977); Aaron HalleWolfssohn, Leichtsinn und Frömmelei: Ein Familiengemälde in drei Aufzügen, ed. Mit einem Nachwort von Gunnar Och und Jutta Strauss (St. Ingbert: Roehring, 1995). See Chone Shmeruk, Sifrut yidish, praqim letoldoteiha (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1978), ch. 5; Shmuel Feiner, “Hamaavaq bahaskala hamezuyefet ugevuloteiha shel hamodernizatsia hayehudit,” in Sefer hayovel likhvod shmuel verses, ed. Avner Holtzman et al. (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2002), 3–32. 40. Isaak Euchel, Reb Henoch, oder: Woss tut me damit, Eine jüdische Komödie der Aufklärungzeit, ed. Marion Aptroot and Roland Gruschka (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 2004).

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41. Briefwechsel zwischen Rahel und David Veit, vol. 2 (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhous, 1861), 77–84. See Neimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin, 259– 262; Heidi Thomann Twerson, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life and Work of a German Jewish Intellectual (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, ed. Liliane Weissberg (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997). 42. Lazarus Bendavid, Etwas zur Charackteristick der Juden (Leipzig: Joseph Stahel, 1793).

seventeen

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THE FUTURE OF THE JEWS A New Politics, a Religion in Dispute, and Freedom of the Individual

In the final years of his life, Lord George Gordon expected the political turmoil in Europe in the age of revolution and reform to bring about a fundamental change in the status of the Jewish minority beyond France. Indeed, during the 1790s, kings, emperors, parliaments, and governmental committees pondered desirable policy. The new political rhetoric of enlightened absolutism and revolutionary slogans justified a vision of future Jewish citizenship. The prisoner in Newgate believed that a special opportunity for improvement had emerged in Poland during the years of the four-year Sejm. In the summer of 1792, he sent a letter to a meeting of friends of Poland in London, demanding them to make their support and contribution conditional on granting equal rights to the Jews. He argued that the “Polish Revolution” was counterfeit and only pretended to strive for liberty, because, in contrast to the French National Assembly, the May 3 constitution was disappointing. The Sejm had done nothing for the million or more Jews living in Poland.1

“One L aw for E v eryone”?: Th e Je ws of Pol a n d in th e L a st Pa rtitions Gordon was not much mistaken. The new constitution did transform Poland from a republic to a constitutional monarchy; it separated governmental powers, increased the authority of the king and his government, and canceled the system of unanimous decision by the Sejm. However, although it proclaimed that rule in human society derives from the will of the people, it preserved the privileges of the nobility and the supremacy of the Catholic religion. A year before its adoption, riots against the Jews broke out in Warsaw (May 16, 1790),

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giving violent expression to the tension in the capital between the bourgeoisie, who sought to block economic competition and demanded the prohibition of permanent Jewish residence in the city, and Jews, who found opportunities there to earn a living as merchants, peddlers, and craftsmen. A false rumor that Jews had killed a Polish tailor, Jan Fux, after he had angrily attacked a Jew, whom he saw as a competitor, incited a mob to break into Jewish homes, to plunder and destroy them, and to beat up Jews. Because many Jews were living in Warsaw under the protection of aristocrats, the riots were also a political rebellion of the bourgeoisie against the Szlachta. While the May 3 constitution was greeted with approval among revolutionaries and liberals in France, the United States, and Britain and some people regarded it as the most important event in the last decade of the eighteenth century, it did not dismantle the class structure of the country, adopt the principle of equality and liberty, or relate at all to the Jewish subjects of Poland.2 Although the four-year Sejm did not ultimately decide about their status, during the last years of Poland’s existence, the public political debate raised the question of the future of the Jews both as a minority in the country and as the largest concentration of Jews in the world. In the lively “literary parliament” that debated in the arena of public opinion, in memorandums and petitions addressed to the delegates of the Sejm, many proposals were offered for reform of the Jewish community in terms of finance, taxation, education, language, and costume. The outlines of the discussion of the Jewish question in Poland were very similar to those of the parallel discussions in France and Germany. Were the Jews suitable for citizenship? Could they be useful and loyal citizens? Should they be expelled from the country as a foreign and harmful element, or at least should they be kept away from tavern-keeping and the business of distilling and selling alcoholic beverages? Should the autonomy of a group, which was a state within the state, be curtailed? Should they be forced to wear Polish costume, receive a modern education, and learn the language of the country as a condition for rights? As in the debates in the National Assembly in Paris and, years before that, about the Jew Bill in England, opinions were mixed and contradictory. A delegate to the Sejm from the Pinsk district, Matheusz Butrymowicz (1745–1814), advocated removing the Jews from the taverns. At the same time, like Dohm, he believed that, although their characters were flawed, these flaws were not essential but rather the result of discrimination and exclusion. In his opinion, the Jews should be granted civil rights, but only on the condition that they assimilate into the Polish majority and give up many of their religious customs. The deep Jewish involvement in this debate was unprecedented in its extent

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and intensity. Jacob Goldberg estimated that about 120 agents of the Jews were active in Warsaw at that time, noting, “During the four-year Sejm, just as the political movement of the Polish bourgeoisie took shape, so, too, at the same time, the first political movement among the Jews was born.” Several communities sent delegations to Warsaw, lobbying to assure freedom of residence and trade as well as equal citizenship in the city and also to thwart decisions that would infringe on Jewish autonomy, religion, and rabbinical authority. Petitions in this spirit were addressed to King Stanisław Poniatowski and his advisors. Rabbi Herschel Jozefowicz of Chelm, for example, wrote a pamphlet in which he argued against Butrymowicz, asserting that the Jewish religion actually guaranteed loyalty to the state. He did not hesitate to accuse the real “leeches,” who sucked the peasants’ blood. Instead of accusing the Jewish innkeepers, he said, they should ask “who extorts enormous sums from them, which they cannot afford, for the concessions? For whom do they work, and to whom do they deliver all their harvest?” Menachem Mendel Lefin (1749–1826), a Maskil who was born in Satanow and returned to Poland after visiting Moses Mendelssohn’s circle, was resident in Warsaw at that time. He reported about a Hasidic leader, perhaps Rabbi Levi Yitsh of Berdyczow, who arrived from the Ukraine, seeking to influence the decisions and forestall harsh edicts. In contrast, certain Maskilim were enthusiastic about the French Revolution and found an opportunity to make their own recommendations and publish petitions for equality and deep reforms in governance and education. “Behold, the century of truth and justice has finally arrived,” wrote David Königsberger, a merchant from Silesia, in a memorandum he published in a French periodical that appeared in Warsaw. In the name of the Third Estate, he hoped that all human beings, including the Jews, would receive their natural rights. Solomon Polonus (1750–1824), a Polish patriot, a graduate of a Dutch university, and a physician in Vilna, demanded restriction of rabbinical authority solely to matters of religion and the requirement that the Polish language be used in education and the community registers. In his opinion, if France had been convinced that fifty thousand Jews were worthy of citizenship, there was no reason to oppose making a million Polish Jews into “happy and useful to their country.”3 Lefin strove for a similar vision of the future. While living in Warsaw, he was gripped by enthusiasm and believed he was capable of exerting influence as a Maskil who promoted the most exalted ideals. In 1791 and 1792, seeing himself as a Polish-Jewish legislator, he outlined his program for reform in a French pamphlet addressed to the educational committee of the Sejm and in a Hebrew “compendium of principles,” intended for the special committee established by the Sejm to formulate proposals for the integration of the Jews. In the dozens

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of articles in these two documents, this pioneer of Haskalah in Eastern Europe proposed equality of political rights, the establishment of modern schools in the Polish language, the publication of science books, subordination of the rabbinate to the state, encouragement of agriculture, and improvement in the conduct of the community leadership. His sources of inspiration were the principles for the rehabilitation of the Jews presented in Dohm’s highly influential work, the debates in Paris, the legislation of Joseph II in Vienna, and especially his patron from the Szlachta, Adam Czartoryski, who advocated a policy of reform, as well as Mendelssohn, who, Lefin claimed, had instructed him in a kind of testament “to do whatever is possible to improve the fate of the people of Israel.” On the same occasion he also launched a fierce attack against what he regarded as the intolerable deviance of the Kabbalah, which influenced the rise of Hasidism in Poland. In one of the first declarations of war against Hasidism by a Maskil, Lefin portrayed it as the embodiment of ignorance, an obstacle to progress and reason, and even as a stumbling block; only its removal would make reforms possible. He did not hesitate to call upon the government to combat this religious fanaticism with its means. However, Lefin did not ignore the possibility that the reforms might become harsh edicts, and he heeded the hostile voices of the Jews surrounding the deliberations of the Sejm. He wanted the Jews themselves to outline the reforms appropriate to them rather than leave it in the hands of the Polish government.4 Counter-lobbying by the burghers and fear of infringing on the privileges of the nobility ultimately blocked the intentions of the reformers. Poland disintegrated into its final extinction. The May 3 constitution infuriated Katherine II, who saw it as provocation by a subject state and an expression of the spirit of revolution, which terrified her. She devised a plan for taking another bite out of Polish territory. When Gordon implored the friends of Poland in England to take note that the Sejm had not offered any hope for improving the status of the Jews, the short war between Russia and Poland was already over, preparing the way for the Second Partition. Thousands of Russian troops invaded Poland along with aristocrats who opposed the constitution (the Targowica Confederation), ostensibly to restore liberty. The defending army had no chance. The humiliation of Poland and the king grew deeper. Friedrich Wilhelm II first wrote to Poniatowski that he supported the liberty and independence of his country, but then he joined with Katherine in the demand for territory of his own. After the Partition (January 23, 1793) between Russia, which annexed parts of the Ukraine and the Minsk district, and Prussia, which controlled the cities of Kalisz, Poznan, and Płock, independent Poland was left with a population of only four million.5

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The Polish rebellion of 1794 was the final, failed effort to free the country of conquest. Abraham Trebitsch summarized these dramatic months in a few words: “Once again a shameful mess was made in Poland, a great multitude gathered and rose up, waged war against Russia and Prussia to protest against the Partition, so they would not overpower them.” He knew that the leader of the rebellion, Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817), had been a hero in the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s and was imbued with the spirit of the French Revolution. Trebitsch said of him: “Over their army was the leader Kościuszko, whose mind was bent toward France.” The rebellion began with a success, as the Russian soldiers were driven from the capital: “They gathered in Warsaw, and they slaughtered the men of Russia, who were encamped there.”6 Kościuszko proclaimed the rebellion in Cracow on March 24, hoping to unite the Poles in defense of the homeland against the common enemy with promises of equality and liberty for all the classes—“every Jew, peasant, nobleman, priest, and burgher is of equal honor in my eyes.” Three weeks later, Warsaw also rebelled, and Poniatowski joined the rebellion, despite its Jacobin character and fear that his fate would be similar to that of Louis XVI. Patriotism as well as hope to improve their status and the spirit of adventure attracted young Jews from the lower classes—craftsmen, apprentices, and clerks in shops—to fall upon Russian soldiers. Kościuszko praised them: “On April 17–18, when the city of Warsaw waged bloody war with the Muscovite invaders, the Jews of that city took up arms, bravely confronted the enemy, and proved to the world that in a place where the benefit of humanity can be won, they do not spare their lives.” The wealthy Jewish bourgeoisie in Warsaw, Vilna, and Cracow contributed money to the rebellion, and in the capital, the Jews helped erect barricades and stood guard against the besieging Prussian and Russian armies. On May 17, the Jewish physician Polonus implored the Jews to support the national rebellion of the Poles and even to see enlistment in the struggle for equality and liberty as a religious duty anchored in the words of the prophets. Jewish involvement in the struggle peaked with the initiative of Joseph Aharonowicz and Dov Ber (Berek) Joselewicz to establish a military unit composed solely of Jews. Kościuszko was enthusiastic and issued a proclamation published in the official newspaper of Warsaw on September 17, stating that he agreed to the formation of a regiment of light cavalry composed of “members of the old religion,” which would be supplied with weapons to fight against the enemy. Ancient history teaches us, he said, that the Jews have a splendid tradition of heroic battles, such as the rebellion against the Romans, and their participation testifies to the justice of the Polish rebellion. Joselewicz was thirty years old when he was appointed to command the regiment. He was

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born in Kretynga, Lithuania, was closely acquainted with the Polish elites, and had been exposed to the climate of the Enlightenment as an agent of the court of the bishop of Vilna in trips to the cities of France and Germany. He was a horse dealer in Praga and a member of the high Jewish bourgeoisie. As a Polish patriot who embraced the sentiments of the revolution, Joselewicz believed that the Jews could gain their liberty on the battlefield. On October 1, he published an appeal in Polish, showing admiration for Kościuszko, “the emissary of God,” and urging his brethren to enlist for the homeland. He asked: “Why should we, the oppressed, persecuted more than all the people in the world, not take up arms? . . . Why should we not labor to obtain liberty, which is promised to us with security and sincerity, like all the people in the world? First we must merit that liberty.”7 The Jewish regiment, which apparently had about five hundred recruits, hardly had any time to organize. Within about a month after Joselewicz’s proclamation, the Polish rebellion was suppressed. Kościuszko was captured, and the Russian army broke into Praga on November 4 and slaughtered soldiers and citizens. As Trebitsch described the dramatic events: “In early 5555 [1794], in Poland, the fire went and out subsided, Russia triumphed and captured the general of the army, Kościuszko, and immediately the assistance stumbled, and the help fell down, and they conquered beyond the Vistula River and the city of Praga . . . and of twenty-six thousand Polish troops who were in it, twelve thousand were killed and ten thousand were captured, two thousand sank into the water, and two thousand of them were scattered while alive, and also immediately taken to the city of Warsaw.” The Jewish chronicle did not mention Joselewicz and his soldiers. They apparently fought on that dreadful day of defeat and failure, and only a few survived. Their commander was not with them at the time and managed to escape. He was killed on the battlefield in the ranks of the Polish legion fifteen years later. This short episode was far from representative of the Jews of Poland. Israel Bartal emphasized that Joselewicz belonged to the assimilated Jewish elite: “During the rebellion, it does not appear that Joselewicz received support or sympathy from the members of the traditional society. His political connections were solely with the Polish side.” He did enlist his soldiers in the name of God and the promise of liberty, but the Polish cause was the main thing for him. Only later were Joselewicz and his cavalry regiment pictured as a model of Jewish-Polish brotherhood, formed and sealed in blood in the last month of the independent state.8 In early 1795, agreement was reached for the Third Partition. The king left his palace and was forced to confirm his renunciation of the crown. Warsaw itself was placed under Prussian rule. Trebitsch was fully aware of the international

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relations that led to the deletion of Poland from the map of Europe and described it laconically: “The matter we were dealing with earlier, the emperor Leopold, and Russia, and Prussia, three giants, divided Poland into three parts, now the matter was clear to each of them, which part was coming to them.”9 The Jews of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were split up among the “three giants”: about a quarter of a million were in Galicia, under Austrian rule, about six hundred thousand were in the Pale of Settlement in Katherine II’s Russia, and about a hundred and fifty thousand were in the new regions of southern and eastern New Prussia. The community of Poznan, which had already been placed under Prussian rule with the second Partition, greeted King Friedrich Wilhelm II on the day of his coronation as the ruler “of Great Poland” (May 7, 1793) with “a song of joy and happiness,” which was published in German and Hebrew. The verses of the song show that great things were expected from the new ruler: “Rejoice, Poland, Poznan will be happy for you, great man, they will sing and make music, the wound is healed, from the wasteland of generation after generation, we have been brought to Eden. . . . We too, the house of Jacob, the residents of the land, are happy for you, great king.”10 Reality was quite distant from these ceremonious words. In fact, the three successor states placed the Jews of erstwhile Poland under close supervision. Communal autonomy was weakened, and the policies in the spirit of enlightened absolutism sought to create “useful citizens.” Many of the directives issued from Berlin, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg were perceived as harsh edicts. For example, just two months after the song in praise of Prussia was sung, Otto Friedrich von Voss (1750–1823), the governor of Southern Prussia, issued an order requiring the registry of Jewish marriages, forbidding them before the age of twenty-five, and requiring ownership of property worth a thousand thalers or gainful employment. The policy of supervision and its intention were formulated in General Regulations (April 17, 1797), which included the encouragement of crafts and agriculture, the prohibition of peddling, the restriction of the community authority solely to the area of religion, the cancellation of the rabbinical courts, the permission to study in non-Jewish schools, and the requirement to adopt permanent family names. David Sorkin summed up the meaning of these regulations: “Prussia’s 1797 legislation of conditional emancipation left Posen’s Jews in limbo. It stripped them of communal autonomy yet still treated them as community.”11 In the Russian Empire, Katherine II created the Pale of Settlement for the Jews and rejected merchants’ petitions to expand their business to the Russian interior, especially Moscow. At first Jewish residence was restricted to White Russia (December 23, 1791), but after the Second and Third Partition, it

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included the districts that had been annexed from Poland and large areas in the south of the Czarist Empire that had been conquered from the Ottomans, for it was in the Russian interest to populate them and develop them economically. As in Prussia, Katherine II sought to dismantle Jewish autonomy, and a law was passed leaving the community in control only of the area of religious customs. The Jews were made subject to the burgher class and the municipal courts (May 3, 1795). Upon Katherine’s death on November 17, 1796, her son Pawel I ascended to the throne, and hopes soared again. The Shklow community wrote a “poem of prayer” for the new czar, expressing a picture of the future: “One law for everyone. Hostility between one man and another, and oppressing brethren because of differences in faith among them will no longer be seen and heard in his days.” Accepting the duties of citizenship would guarantee rights: “And with his justice he will make our laws and our settlements in his kingdom equal to the law and settlement of all the nations.”12

“Th e Gate s W er e Tor n Dow n to th e Grou n d” In parallel with the civil emancipation of the Jews, the French Revolution awakened the millenarian vision of the restoration of the Jews among English Protestants: their return to the Land of Israel and their recognition of the truth of Christianity. The fall of the French monarchy and the protracted wars inflamed theological imagination. Several works that were published in the 1790s interpreted the fateful historical events in the light of biblical prophecies, explaining the revival of the Jews as a stage in redemption of the world. Richard Beere, a minister, encouraged British Prime Minister William Pitt to take action, since no man who had risen to the stage of the world theater had ever had an opportunity to play such a great role. He wanted Pitt to promote the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, which, according to his calculations, was to be expected in 1791. Beere claimed this was neither utopian nor the fruit of wild imagination. Rather, it depended on revelation, historical fact, solid argument, and precise calculation. Richard Brothers (1757–1824), a former naval officer, even claimed a messianic role for himself, claiming direct revelation from heaven, by means of which he could decipher the divine plan in history. His book, A Revealed Knowledge of The Prophecies and Times, which was published during the Reign of Terror in France, promised to explain the religious meaning of the tumultuous age and present. His many followers believed he was sent by God from the seed of King David, who would redeem England and the entire world. He claimed to be a prince and prophet who would lead the Jews to revival, beginning in 1795, which would culminate in the rebuilding of Jerusalem three years

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later. He believed that the momentous events in France had been determined in advance and were hinted at in the Bible. No man could thwart the divine plan. David Levi, who regarded himself as the representative of the Jews of England in responding to intellectual and theological challenges, quickly declared that he denied those prophecies, and, with respect to political disputes, the Jews never took part in rebellion against the government. In contrast, in 1795, a pamphlet signed by Moses Gomez Pereira was published that supported Brothers and shared the messianic expectations of his Christian followers.13 The year 1783 also had messianic significance as the end of years for the Jewish diamond merchant from London, Elyakim Ben Abraham (1756–1814). In his interpretation of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel, the events in America and France were presented as proof of the onset of redemption and “the light of liberty.” In the wake of the revolutions in the “end of years,” the day was approaching when “saviors will ascend to Zion, and the Lord will be King of the whole earth.”14 Religious enthusiasm provoked by the fateful political changes seized the American colonies, and biblical imagery was attached to the leaders of the revolution. When George Washington visited the synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island (July 18, 1790), the warden of the synagogue, Moses Seixas, presented him with a letter of salutation, replete with biblical associations: “The God of Israel, who delivered David from the peril of the sword—shielded Your head in the day of battle,” and “the same Spirit, who rested in the Bosom of the greatly beloved Daniel enabling him to preside over the Provinces of the Babylonish Empire, rests and ever will rest, upon you, enabling you to discharge the arduous duties of Chief Magistrate in these States.” In his reply, Washington connected the fate of the Jews of America with the biblical vision of redemption: “May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” In reply to another letter of congratulation from the community of Savannah, Georgia, Washington compared the Jews of America to the Israelites who were delivered from bondage in Egypt: “May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land—whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation—still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven.” In his letter to the Jews of Newport, Washington also emphasized the political principles of the revolution and reinforced his conviction of a universal mission: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having

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given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation.” From this is derived the key idea, which distinguished the new state from the countries of Europe with respect to their attitude toward the Jews: the principle of equality is greater than that of toleration. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” Regardless of these declarations, in the new country, reality did not always coincide with the principles. For example, in Maryland, the obligation to take a Christian oath as a condition for serving in public office had not yet been abolished. In the 1790s, hostile images appeared in the Federalist propaganda in their bitter dispute against the Republicans, partisans of democracy and the French Revolution. Solomon Simson served as the vice president of the democratic association of New York, which the Federalist newspaper called “members of the Tribe of Shylock.” However, the Jews knew very well that their fate had improved. In an exceptional letter sent in 1795 by the Jews of New York to those of Kaifeng, China, they wrote, that “we dwell here in the country of America, in New York and elsewhere in great tranquility. Israelites sit [as judges] in suits involving the uncircumcised in civil and criminal trials.”15 The letters of Rebecca Samuel, the wife of a successful watchmaker, Chaim, contain fascinating evidence on the tension between liberty and abundant opportunity and the difficulty in maintaining the norms of the religion. Writing from Pittsburgh, which was then in the territory of Virginia, to her parents in Hamburg, Germany, she told them that the place was not at all suitable for Jews, because there was hardly any minyan for prayers, no cemetery, no organized community, no Jewish education, and no rabbi. Stores owned by Jews were open on the Sabbath, observance of kashrut was sketchy, and there was no one with the authority to enforce religious discipline. Nevertheless, the land was marvelous, and the liberty was inebriating: “One can earn a living in abundance, and everyone lives in peace. People do what they wish. There isn’t a rabbi in all of America to excommunicate everyone. That is the way here: the Jew and the gentile are the same. There is no exile here.”16 When Washington made it clear in the letter—which became the unofficial writ of emancipation for the Jews of the United States—that it was no longer a question of toleration that preserved the hierarchical relations between the state and the minority, he was undoubtedly thinking about the Austrian Empire. Even after the death of Joseph II, the patronizing policy persisted. In 1790, a delegation of Galician Jews, headed by Rabbi Jacob (Jacovka) Landau (1746–1824), submitted a petition to the emperor, Leopold II (1747–1792), hoping to convince

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him to rescind the conditions for permission to marry and the obligation of modern education and military service and perhaps also to restore authority to the rabbinical courts. Like Katherine in Russia, the next Austrian emperor, Franz II , was very fearful of the winds of the revolution, and he instituted a reaction against the policy of toleration. Trebitsch reported that during the fifth round of wars against the revolution, in 1796, “the decree of the king was renewed for a third time, on the holiday of Shavuot Jewish soldiers were taken, throughout the state, on this day like sheep; and how awful, it was the day of the giving of the Torah, and young men saw and hid.” Jewish soldiers were sent to combat at the front. It was no longer possible to purchase an exemption from service, “and they intentionally took persons [not money], for until now they were only chosen for transport, and now they were sent to the sword and fire.” Riots broke out in 1797 in Brody when Jewish recruits were conscripted for the Austrian army to fight against France. In that year, the emperor signed new legislation regarding the Jews of Bohemia. Although it began with a declaration of equality and tolerance, most of its articles increased supervision of marriages and businesses, and the equality remained only in military service.17 In Prussia, under King Friedrich Wilhelm II, representatives of the wealthy and cultivated elite launched the struggle for citizenship and equality. Isaac Meir Wolf, Daniel Itzig, and David Friedländer led the appeal to the authorities, especially to the special commission that had been established to examine the status of the Jews. They used the terms of reform created by Dohm and were careful to avoid the language of the revolution, preserving their adherence to the principles of absolutism. They pointed to the anomaly in the status of the Jews as a result of historical circumstances, and they argued that reforms in education and occupations would make them fit for integration as loyal and hard-working citizens who would be useful to the state. The commission affirmed that, indeed, if a process of rehabilitation were begun, perhaps in another sixty or seventy years, equal rights would be possible. The disappointment was great. The protest of the modern Jews, that “the hour has come to remove from us the bonds that have oppressed us for so long . . . and this can only take place when we are placed in full equality with the other subjects,” went unheeded. The political frustration shook solidarity and opened a rift in society. In despair over the prospect of general emancipation, the wealthy Jews of Königsberg made the following request: “At least let us, the heads of the [property owning] families, be free of the oppression of the bonds [of joint responsibility among the] members of the Jewish communities, and of the other [Jews], who do not wish to be free.” It appears that Prussia believed only in individual emancipation. Thus, Itzig and

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his family received a certification of naturalization (Naturalisationspatent) signed by Friedrich Wilhelm II (May 2, 1791), presented as an act of grace in response to the personal petition of “the chief banker of our court,” in return for his services, and not as a natural right. The document states: “Daniel Itzig himself and his progeny from marriage of both sexes will be naturalized and enjoy all the rights of Christian citizens . . . they will be considered and treated everywhere like a family of Christian citizens. . . . Without their being subject to the restrictions hitherto imposed on the Jews in the General Privilege.” Juridically speaking, Itzig’s family became “Christian” and was freed from community authority. “Jewish” behavior such as deceit and dishonesty in business would deprive them of citizenship. Although this was a precedent for full citizenship in Prussia, the policy was quite different from that of the United States and France. For example, the Friedländer family’s request for citizenship status similar to that of Itzig was rejected. The king, who awarded the philosopher and physician Marcus Herz the title of professor in 1793—the first time a Jew had received it—refused his request to join the royal academy of sciences.18 The editors of Hameasef in Breslau received better news from Amsterdam in the autumn of 1796. An emotional letter, apparently sent by the Berlin-born Maskil David Friedrichsfeld (1755–1810) on behalf of the patriotic political club Felix Libertate (Happy in Liberty), announced the emancipation of the Jews of Holland. The letter proclaimed: My dear brethren, members of Society for the Promotion of the Good and Virtue! Give honor and strength to the Lord! In His praise announce within the public of the people of Jeshurun . . . that the Lord has illuminated the hearts of the heads and legislators of the people of Batavia, in their meeting together in a great assembly [national versammlung] . . . to declare freedom for all the children of Israel who dwell within their borders, to release the reins around their necks, to raise them from the dust, and to place them, as human beings, as one of them.

Three years after the law of emancipation in Paris and six days before the letter was sent (September 2, 1796), the National Assembly did indeed vote unanimously for a law “that no Jew at all should be deprived of the rights and privileges conferred by Batavian citizenship, if he wishes to enjoy them, on condition that he fulfill all the demands and satisfies all the conditions demanded by the general law of every citizen.” The gates of citizenship were thrown open to the approximately fifty thousand Jews of Holland, including the twenty-two thousand Jews of Amsterdam, the largest Jewish community in the world.19

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As we have seen, for many years Holland had already been a destination for Jews and a model of religious toleration, but emancipation was a direct result of the wars of the French Revolution. Trebitsch’s chronicle reports: “In that winter [January 1795], the French invaded the entire country of Holland with great strength, and they were greeted willingly. . . . The lord stadtholder, the Prince of Orange, in his emergency took refuge in England.” The French soldiers, joined by Dutch emigres who also wished to overthrow the House of Orange, were received with open arms by the patriots, some of whom had rebelled even before the invasion. Willem V fled to England, and the Batavian Republic was established as an independent sister-country to France: “The people of Holland united with their French neighbors and threw off the yoke of their masters and fear of him will not rise over their heads, and they will only remain free to themselves, and they will choose their ministers and leaders, as it is done in Paris.” On the last day of January 1795, the Dutch National Assembly had already determined the principles of the new republic, with a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.20 In the shadow of these ceremonious words, fear of an inner rift grew stronger. As noted, in the failed revolution of the patriots in 1787, most of the Jews supported the House of Orange, and the revolution aroused forebodings of a new order. The registers of the Ashkenazi community record that on the first day after the soldiers entered Amsterdam, it was forbidden to go outdoors with the color of orange, symbolizing support of the old order, and immediately a plaque was removed from the synagogue containing a prayer for the stadtholder, and it was replaced by a prayer for the leaders of the republic. When the lay leaders of the community were summoned before the mayor on March 2, a document about equality was read to them: “Now the blessed time has come to the Jews, now their horn will be raised, precious liberty, equality, and brotherhood are imbibed.” They were ordered to paste it on the gates of the synagogues. In addition, the lay leaders were ordered to proclaim the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which had been drafted in The Hague and translated into Yiddish. The clash between the norms of the religion and the demands of the revolutionary regime aroused opposition to these two demands. The first document contained a declaration that they must not reprimand young men who enlist to maintain public order, even if they violate the Sabbath, and the fifth article of the second document permitted the abandoning of religion. The lay leaders panicked: “Will this not open the door to violate the religion without fear of punishment, everyone will do what his heart thinks is right, he will go wild in the arbitrariness of his heart, the pillars of the Torah are shaken, and worship will be thrown to the ground.” Dread of secularization and

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the loss of religious authority inspired an emergency assembly of representatives of the communities of Amsterdam, Leyden, Rotterdam, and The Hague. A petition signed by six hundred Jews protested against requiring the declaration of civil rights to be read in synagogues.21 In contrast, the Jewish supporters of the revolution and the principles of the Enlightenment and democracy, who, on September 6, 1795, founded the Felix Libertate, were imbued with the feeling of exaltation and happiness, and they wished to inspire others with that feeling. The most prominent among them were merchant Mozes Salomon Asser, Harmanus Leonard Bromet, physician Hartog de Lémon, banker Jacob Sasportas, and David Friedrichsfeld. While they represented only a minority of the Jews, the new regime was on their side. They disseminated the bywords of the revolution, included non-Jews in their union, and sought to detach Jewish identification from the House of Orange. They served as a lobby for emancipation, and, contrary to the community leadership, they wanted Jews to enlist in the civil guard. The heads of the union took part in the ceremony of planting the tree of liberty in front of the city hall on March 3. “They circled around this tree of liberty with drums and dancing. . . . Among them were a few Jews from Felix Libertate, and after them, children from all the orphanages of all the faiths that are found in this city, two boys and two girls from each one, and among them were also orphans from the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities.” As in Poland and France, during the 1790s, a lively discussion also took place in Holland in the newspapers, in pamphlets, and in the parliament as to whether the Jews were worthy of citizenship. As an advocate for the Jews, Friedrichsfeld played a role similar to that of his contemporaries, Zalkind Hourwitz in France, Friedländer in Prussia, and Levi in England. In 1795, he published a pamphlet, The Messia of the Jews (1796), in which he argued that the Jews should be defined as members of a religion and that the idea of the return to Zion was merely a vision. The law of emancipation was born out of a memorandum addressed by Felix Libertate to the National Assembly. The commission that was established recommended equality in rights and obligations, and during eight days, from August 22 to August 30, 1796, thirty-four of the delegates expressed arguments on both sides. The speeches in The Hague quoted and reverberated with many voices from European discourse of the recent decades. The Jew Bill of 1753 in England, the edicts of Joseph II, the emancipation in France, and citizenship in the United States were all adduced as precedents. The resolution separating religion from the state (August 5) and the intervention of the French ambassador contributed to recognition that, as individuals, Jews could not be prevented from requesting full citizenship.22

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Zvi Hirsch of Ilfeld, in his book, Divrei negidim (The Officers’ Words), requested political preparation for the Jews of Holland in the spirit of the revolution. He composed a Hebrew chronicle of the events that led to emancipation, translated the speeches of the delegates to the National Assembly, and added a lexicon as an appendix (for example, Hebrew terms for superstition, a free person, the principles of liberty, enlightened understanding, and equality). Like his comrades in Felix Libertate, his primary goal was to persuade his readers that a historical turning point in the fate of the Jews had been reached: “To proclaim to the House of Jacob that they must recognize and know this deed of the Lord and His action, for He placed in the heart of those who are not circumcised in the country of Batavia to be good to us with all the good that goes to them, to go with them according to liberty.” Divrei negidim presented Felix Libertate as being in opposition to the rule of the lay leaders. The community and the political club, whose members defined themselves as “individuals and residents of the people of Batavia, who believe in the religion of Moses,” were headed for a confrontation, which also bore a steep price. Implementation of the legislation was slow and partial, but its results were immediately visible. Bromet and de Lémon were elected to the second National Assembly (August 1, 1797). Although they only served for about half a year, they created a precedent: they were the first Jews in a European parliament. In early September, certain Jews, “lovers of liberty,” traveled from Amsterdam to The Hague to “see the honor of the aforementioned two Jewish officers who sat in the council of legislators of the law of the nation of Batavia. . . . To thank the Lord for doing good and raising the horn of Israel and seating them with the nobles of the people [cf. Num. 21:18], and they recited the blessing to God, who has kept us alive and sustained us and brought us to this time.” The deep inner political dispute ultimately brought about a cultural and political rift in the community. The democratic patriots withdrew (March 17, 1797) and established a new community named Adat Yeshurun (The Community of Jeshurun). Their regulations declared the date of September 2 a holiday to commemorate the emancipation. In the early summer (June 16), they had already inaugurated their replacement synagogue, led by Rabbi Isaac Ben Abraham Graanboom (1738–1807).23 Graanboom was one of the most unusual rabbis in the entire eighteenth century. He was born in Sweden and named Mattheus. At midcentury, he converted to Judaism with his parents and siblings in Amsterdam. In his autobiography, he wrote that his father, Abraham, “was revolted by the idolatry of his home country, and he listened and researched to know in what way the light dwelled . . . and then he became another man and knew his Maker.” He himself became a teacher of Torah in the Ashkenazi community of Amsterdam, was

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well respected, and was appointed one of the three religious judges (dayanim). Graanboom, along with his colleagues in the rabbinical elite, preached against secularization, yet he greeted emancipation enthusiastically and saw it as a redemption. In a prayer that was recited at the conclusion of the dedication ceremony for the synagogue, the universal values of the Adat Jeshurun were combined in a vision of the future in the Enlightenment spirit with the consciousness of being a persecuted minority: “Save us from the hand of our enemies and enviers, who persecute us for no reason, because we are of a different spirit. We are sick of deceit and love honesty. . . . Open their eyes to walk in the light of your countenance . . . may you bless all countries with peace and may you surely save all those born of woman from the sword of man raised against his fellow and the sword of war.”24 At that time, emancipation also reached Italy on the bayonets of the French army. In an account of the story of liberation he experienced, an anonymous writer from the city of Ancona, a port on the Adriatic, reported: “You must know that the French love the Jews absolutely. Proof of this is that all the towns in the countries they conquered under their hand, if there were Jews there, they enlarge them and raise them up and suppress the seed of Edom.” The Corsican-born general, Napoleon (1769–1821), who was then only twenty-seven, is presented as the redeemer of the Jews, with his impressive victories in the revolutionary wars in the states of Italy beginning in 1796. He led the French army in its invasion of the papal states, conquering Ancona, Mantua, Venice, and many other cities and establishing the sister state, the Cisalpine Republic, in northern Italy. In his Hebrew chronicle, Trebitsch told his readers that the French reached the gates of Venice in the spring of 1797, and, after brief resistance: They entered the city of Venice, the fortified capital, which was built upon many islands on the Adriatic sea, and they liberated them from their master and they removed the turban and hat of the government of the Duce . . . and thus did he [Napoleon] for most of the inhabitants of Italy, liberating them all, some against their will, and for some of them he opened the door by chance, to throw the yoke off their heads, and he . . . changed the system of their government to lead them in a new manner, for they were liberated.

The policy of liberation and naturalization effectively overthrew the system of the ghettoes, which the Catholic Counter-Reformation had imposed on most of the 31,000 Jews of the various Italian states. Opening the gates of the ghettoes, the election of Jews to city councils, their joining patriotic unions and the national guard, and their participation in ceremonies of liberation and the planting of trees of liberty between 1796 and 1798 were expressions of the

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emancipation. The constitution of the new republic in Italy, adopted on July 9, 1797, stated explicitly: “Every person is born and remains free with the right to enjoy full rights. The Jews are citizens, and they have to be recognized as such in society.”25 The Jews of Italy greeted the new political order with enthusiasm. Moses Formiggini (1756–1810), a merchant and goldsmith who supported the revolution and advocated emancipation, was a member of the municipal council of his city and later became a delegate to the legislature of the Cisalpine Republic. In a speech that he gave in October 1796, he presented the doctrine of religious tolerance in the spirit of Voltaire and gave religious affiliation a secondary place: “So mighty is the progress of the spirit of commerce, that it cancels all the superstitions of nations and religions in favor of economic interests, which must unite all human beings. Why are their valueless differences between Lutherans, Jews, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen? . . . Are we not all human beings?” On the eve of the French occupation of Ancona (February 9, 1797), rumors circulated that the Jews were assisting the enemy and a mob threatened to overrun the ghetto and burn the Jews’ homes. The author of the chronicle, Ma’ase nisim (Miraculous Event), told how the French troops arrived as saviors. The obligation to wear a Jewish badge, imposed by the pope, was canceled, the magistrates opened the gates of the ghetto, the Song of the Sea (Exod. 15:1–19) was recited, and enormous excitement was felt upon meeting Jewish soldiers. With schadenfreude, the writer described the event as the miracle of Purim: “And everything was reversed, because great fear fell upon the Christians upon seeing the Frenchmen, and no spirit was left in them, and their hearts died within them, and their faces were like the sides of a pot when they saw the Jews happy and lighthearted.” Three Jews were elected to the municipal council of Ancona, the Inquisition was disbanded, and the gates of the ghetto remained open. A delegation of community leaders went to Milan to meet Napoleon and “to give him thanks for all the good he did for us, that he might strengthen and maintain our liberty.” The gates of the ghetto of Mantua, where about two thousand Jews lived, were also opened to allow free movement. Jewish participation in municipal councils and the national guard raised questions about conflicts between Sabbath prohibitions and civic duty. Rabbi Ishmael Hacohen of Modena (1723–1811) received two inquiries from Mantua. He responded to the first by saying that traveling on the Sabbath could not be permitted, “when all the men of the council ride in a carriage to the place of their meeting in honor and glory, and the men of the council also want the two Jews to go with them in the coach.” In his response to the second one, he wrote, “They ordained that every man from the age of twenty to the age of twenty-five, Jews and gentiles,

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everyone, must go to army service. . . . They will be required to stand guard and to walk about in the city in the markets and streets . . . and another evil sickness, that they will carry a burden on their shoulder, a fire tube,” yet he permitted it. In Padua, a directive was promulgated stating that Jews were permitted to live anywhere in the city, “and the barbarous name” of the ghetto would be replaced by “the street of liberty.” With the justification that “it is necessary to cancel every remnant contrary to the rights of a free man,” the municipal police issued an order to tear down the walls of the ghetto on September 15, 1797, dated “the fifth year of the French Republic and the first year of Italian liberty.”26 Opening the Venetian ghetto was especially symbolic. Since the sixteenth century, it had given its name to all the streets and neighborhoods in other Italian cities that shut their Jewish residents behind walls and gates. The aristocratic government was dismantled in May 1797, after the city fell into hands of the French and was governed by a temporary municipal council. On July 7, that council ordered the removal of the four gates of the Jewish ghetto, and three days later, it issued a directive to do so publicly, with great ceremony. The commander of a division of the national guard, Pierre Marie de Ferrari, reported about how his men had accomplished the mission, accompanied by an orchestra and drums, before a great crowd of residents and French and Italian soldiers. Three representatives of the Jews (Daniel Levi Polacco, Vidal Dangeli, and Moses di David Solam) surrendered the keys, and “the moment the gates were torn down to the ground, men and women broke into dances of joy in the center of the plaza.” The wooden gates were smashed and set on fire to the cheers of the masses, and afterward, a tree of liberty was planted there. The local newspaper, the Gazzetta Veneta Urbana, reported that along with these celebrations, several speeches were given. Isaac Grego, who had been elected to the municipal council, explained the principles of democracy to the audience, presenting liberty and equality “as two holy words.” He attacked the tyranny of the regime that had fallen and implored his listeners not to see liberty as a license to throw off the yoke. He said: “Religion has nothing to do with civil rights, because all human beings deserve equal rights, and everyone can worship the supreme being with the ceremonies he chooses.” Jewish citizen Raphael Vita Vivante was also a member of the council and gave a moving speech about the historical change occurring at that very moment. He declared that “the light of philosophy shines from the blessed shores of France to this country,” and the age of aristocratic rule had ended. The regime had been so oppressive to them, he said, and the gates that had enslaved their nation had been destroyed. God, who had redeemed them in the past from slavery in Egypt, was now placing them in the bosom of the kingdom of law, liberty, and equality, he continued.

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The head of the patriotic union reminded the audience how the Jews had been oppressed, “but all of this has finally surrendered to the development of reason, progress, and the human spirit. . . . Thanks to the immortal Bonaparte, who had shattered the chains of Italian slavery.”27 Liberty, however, was short-lived, as Austria received control over Venice on October 17 of that year, according to the Treaty of Campo Formio. Nevertheless, the ghetto remained open. Indeed, the new order under the French regime and the precedent of liberating the Jews had great significance in Italy and elsewhere. Even the ancient Frankfurt ghetto, whose walls were accidentally destroyed by a huge fire caused by the cannons of the French army (June 12, 1796), was not walled in again. At this moment, toward the end of the eighteenth century, it seemed that the vision of happiness had a true chance. The speech by Vivante before the gates of the ghetto in Venice, as they went up in flames gave powerful expression to these expectations: “Brothers, at long last this happy day has come, when prejudice and superstition are eliminated, a day of revenge against the inequity and insult that we bore unjustly.”28

“I Wa s Pr i v i l eged to Enter th e Fa ith of th e Sage s”: H a si di m, M it nagdi m, a n d Fa natics For the Hasidim in Eastern Europe, that which appeared to be superstition to outsiders was in fact the core of their religious faith. When Dov Ber, a ritual slaughterer from Ilintsy, began to collect and record stories about the wonders of Israel Ben Eli’ezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov, in the 1790s—published in the second decade of the nineteenth century under the title In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov—he weighed in against those who were contemptuous of the supernatural. In the past, dying people told about “the awesome things they had seen the upper world,” but all this had already vanished by the end of the century. Ghosts and dybbuks had become mere childhood memories. Zaddikim had become few, and, most regrettably, “the faith has decreased and heresy has been spread in the world.” Dov Ber was complaining about the secularization of life, for “every day miracles have become fewer, and marvels have begun to disappear.” He hoped that the stories of the Ba’al Shem Tov and his followers would do something to repair the damage and strengthen faith in zaddikim.29 In truth, there was no reason for his low spirits, because not only had the movement of religious awakening to which he belonged not faded away, but it had been consolidated, grown, and developed during the 1790s. Despite the Partition of Poland and the opposition, which drew upon the authority of the Vilna Gaon, many Hasidic courts emerged, attracting believers, spreading to new

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places, and strengthening its ideological control by publishing its teachings. It was present in Galicia (Meshulam Zusya of Hanipoli, Yechiel Mikhel of Złoczów, Menachem Mendel of Rimanov), White Russia (Shneur Zalman of Liady), Lithuania (Chaim Chaykl Levin of Amdur, Asher Perlov of Stolin, Mordecai of Lekovich), and the Ukraine (Levi Yitsh.aq of Berdyczow, Nachum and Mordecai of Chrnobyl, Zeev Wolf of Zhitomir). The court of Rabbi Jacob Isaac Horowitz, the Seer of Lublin (1745–1815), was established in Lublin, in the interior of Poland. He was a disciple of Rabbi Elimelech of Leżajsk and contributed to the independence of the Hasidic movement by excluding the “scholars” who refused to accept the authority of the zaddikim, claiming that they did not study Torah for its own sake.30 Shneur Zalman was already the leader of thousands of Hasidim who streamed to his court in Łoźna, south of Vitebsk. His conception of leadership, based on personal, face-to-face guidance of Hasidim in yeh.idut (individual meetings), conflicted with the heavy burden of relating to a growing number of seekers who wanted his advice. Special regulations restricted visits to the court, determined exact arrangements, and institutionalized the connection with the zaddik—in essence regulating the movement. Immanuel Etkes emphasized that the regulation had extensive influence and exemplified the increasing distance between Shneur Zalman and his Hasidism. This distance was the inevitable consequence of abandoning individual audiences and the inclusion of various functionaries as intermediaries between Shneur Zalman and his Hasidim.31 Joining the ranks of the movement was often experienced as a religious conversion. Ada Rapoport-Albert explained the dramatic change that took place in the 1790s, after the outbreak of the dispute with the Mitnagdim, as the approach of Hasidism to “a revolution in consciousness, which required the absolute separation of the new member from his old surroundings and the adoption of a new identity.” A good example of this was Nathan Sternhartz of Nemirov (1780–1844), who became the right-hand man of the unique zaddik, the great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Sternhartz was from a family of merchants in the Ukraine, and in his autobiography, he told how, at the age of sixteen, already married for three years to the daughter of a rabbi, he changed his identity. While living with his wife’s family, he was “a great opponent of the Hasidim, because my father-in-law disagreed with them strongly.” However, he became more independent and was exposed to new voices. The walls of opposition gradually crumbled, until “I distinguished the truth, and I was privileged to enter the faith of the Sages [believing in their superiority] . . . and then some awe was drawn over me, and I changed for the

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better.” In the following years, he sought a leader among the zaddikim, and he eventually found Nachman. In 1796, faith of the sages, absolute devotion to the authority of the zaddik, was his ticket of entry to the movement of religious awakening.32 The maggid, Isaiah of Janow, collected ideas from the teachings of the earlier Hasidic leaders, mainly those of Dov Ber of Międzyrzec, in a book of recommended practices entitled Tsavat haribash (The Testament of Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem), published in 1793. Like the Kabbalistic books of ethics from the beginning of the century, this book denied the intrinsic value of this world and of human beings (“man, too, is maggots and worms”) and strove to encourage people to overcome the instincts and appetites of the body (“he must separate himself from physicality”) and to devote themselves to the worship of God (“for the blessed Name wants us to worship Him in every way”). Prayer was given particular emphasis. It made possible a sense of closeness and devotion (“one should think before prayer that one is ready to die during that prayer, because of one’s intention”) and of overcoming physicality (“for prayer must be as though stripped of materiality, and one does not feel the reality of this world”). The book attributed an erotic simile to the Ba’al Shem Tov—“prayer is mating with the Shekhina”—and presented the following homily “in the name of rabbi of the holy community of Międzyrzec” with a particularly demeaning image of the status of women: “At the time of intercourse, one must be nothing . . . and one must love one’s wife only the way one loves one’s tefillin, because they are a commandment of God, and he must not think about her, for she is merely like if one travels to a market day. It is impossible to travel except with a horse, and for that reason, would he love the horse? Is there greater foolishness than that? For in this world a man needs a wife for the service of the Creator, to gain the world to come.” Women were seen, at best, as assisting in the service of God—and, at worst, as making men sin by because of the distracting thoughts they arouse in him.33 If Tsavat haribash preserved Hasidic teachings while they were in the making, something of the spirit of rationalism and the challenge of individual autonomy penetrated the religious thought of Shneur Zalman. This is evident in the book that he published in Sławuta in 1796, Liqueti amarim (Collected Sayings), better known as the Tanya. In his thought, independent spiritual worship was the religious equivalent of the quest for personal liberty. The immediate goal of the Tanya, which became one of the most widely circulated books of Jewish religious instruction in the following two centuries, was to provide a response to the problems that arose because of the movement’s success. In the introduction, Shneur Zalman explained to his Hasidim, “men of our group,”

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that the book will be a substitute for personal consultations, “since time no longer permits of replying to everyone individually and in detail on his particular problem . . . so that he will no longer press for admission to private conference with me.” Unlike Tsavat haribash, Shneur Zalman believed that the human intellect was capable of kindling religious emotion. If one contemplated very deeply the greatness of God by means of the tools of intellect (the acronym Habad is made up of three words: hakhma [wisdom], bina [understanding], and da’at [knowledge]), one’s heart burned with fierce love for God. Most Jews were not absolute zaddikim, capable of severing themselves from the desires of the world, but rather were “intermediate,” waging a constant struggle, by means of Torah study and observing the commandments, for rule by the divine soul, which is peculiar to Jews, over the bestial soul. On the one hand, the Tanya makes the individual and his freedom of choice central in life and in religious experience, and thereby it is connected with the spirit of the individualistic age. On the other hand Kabbalistic teachings in the Tanya serve to support radical rejection of the material world and the seductions of sensual pleasures, all of which are defined as sins against God. Man, who is split between matter and spirit, between the tendency to sin and his intellect, which shows him the path of truth in life, is expected to direct his desires solely toward spiritual goals. Aware of the great difficulty for “intermediate” Jews to deny their appetites, Shneur Zalman, the spokesman for the few exalted men who were absolute zaddikim, taught his followers to be repelled by “the disgusting body,” to be contemptuous of desires, and to repress all sensual thoughts, including erotic “sinful reflections.” Shneur Zalman did not recommend asceticism and gloominess, but rather joy, but in his book, he presents life as a difficult, ceaseless battlefield, where a “mighty war” is waged for self-control in the heart and mind of every Jew.34 In response to the expanding and vital Hasidic movement, the task of the Mitnagdim, who were still determined to remove Hasidism, as a heretical sect that had strayed from the straight way, was particularly difficult. The third dispute between the Mitnagdim and the Hasidim took place in the 1790s mainly in Lithuania and White Russia under the Russian Empire, and once again it revolved to a great degree around the authoritative figure of the Vilna Gaon. He apparently ordered the burning of Tsavat haribash in Vilna on the eve of Passover in 1796. At that time, a false rumor was circulating that the Vilna Gaon regretted the struggle against Hasidim, and he had to publish a strenuous denial. The blow to the status and honor of the great Torah scholar and the success of the Hasidim in expanding their ranks and printing their doctrines rekindled the struggle against them.35

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For a moment, this rivalry crossed the border and also reached Germany. An anti-Hasidic pamphlet included the line “Some of these self-made Hasidim spread out in a few countries in Europe to hunt for souls from our nation.” It refuted the claim that the Vilna Gaon himself had retracted and withdrawn his opposition: “A single man made himself into a wanderer and roamer throughout the Diaspora, and a young boy traveled with him as his assistant. The young boy spread the rumor that this man is the pious son of the Light of the Exile, our Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, and he only speaks when he is under great pressure.” The imposture was discovered in Breslau, in the spring of 1796, where a leader of the Vilna community was a guest and reported that there was no change in the Gaon’s attitude and that his sons had never left their city. A warning letter sent from Breslau to Hamburg caught up with the two imposters. When they entered the home of Rabbi Raphael Cohen, they were arrested and punished with lashes. News of this reached Vilna, and two messengers set out for Minsk, bearing an angry letter signed by the Gaon (June 22, 1796): I have heard a great slander, a loud voice of reprimand and rebuke. I heard that the sect of wicked and devilish men, who call themselves by the name of Hasidim, who break out against their lord and father in heaven, are glorying and making speeches, [claiming] that I have retracted everything I said about them until now, and that now I agree with all their actions, and that their way is the straight path. [Not only is that untrue, but] everyone who is called by the name of “Israel,” whose heart has been touched by fear of God, it is incumbent on him to reject them and pursue them with all sorts of persecutions and to repress them to a place where the hand of Israel cannot reach.

The meaning of the new declaration of war was serious: excluding them from the Jewish people and denying their self-definition as Hasidim.36 The Mitnagdim in Minsk were summoned to do battle, and in their answer to the Vilna Gaon, they assured him they were also capable of enlisting the Russian government to their side. To refute rumors that the letter from the Vilna Gaon was forged, after the end of Yom Kippur, 5557 (October 14, 1796), he sent out another uncompromising letter of denial, instilling a sense of urgency among his supporters. The mission was “to take the vengeance of the Torah of God, whose glory those lawbreakers threw down to the ground. . . . Let no one be merciful to them.” The Hasidic prayer group in Minsk was shut down, and the Hasidim were hampered in their action. The beleaguered Hasidim in Vilna addressed Shneur Zalman of Liady, asking him to visit them and to try to persuade the Vilna Gaon. Aware of the politics of the dispute, he replied that there was no chance of direct dialogue. He had taken part in such an effort a

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generation earlier, and the Vilna Gaon’s door had remained locked. One could not hope for a change in his opinion, especially now that he had denounced the Tanya as heresy. Ultimately, no religious authority in Lithuania could disagree with him or contradict his opinion. There might be such authority “in distant countries like Turkey and Italy, and most of Germany and greater and lesser Poland [under Austrian and Prussian rule].” Having imbibed the spirit of democracy of his time, Shneur Zalman proposed resolving the dispute by taking a poll of objective rabbis in the Jewish world, who would read the two positions, placed in writing, and “would follow the majority.” To console himself and his Hasidim, Shneur Zalman compared himself to Maimonides, who had also been the victim of his opponents and whose books were burned in the thirteenth century, though with time, they proved to have been mistaken about him.37 Rumors that Hasidim celebrated the death of the Gaon (October 9, 1797) aroused the ire of the Mitnagdim, who called for revenge. A proclamation was issued in Vilna, renewing the excommunication of those who joined the Hasidic movement, instructing that they should not be seen as Jews, but as gentiles, and they should be expelled from the city. A committee of five community leaders received the authority of a “hidden prosecutor,” to lay bare and punish the members of the “sect of Carliners.” Dubnow called this “the Inquisition tribunal for matters of Hasidism.” After Shneur Zalman’s great rival had passed away, he found himself, to his surprise, attacked from within. Abraham Kalisk sent a letter from Tiberias, reprimanding him for keeping Hasidim who opposed his leadership at a distance, humiliating them, and causing an inner rift. He criticized the Tanya, accusing Shneur Zalman of straying from the way of the Kabbalists by revealing secrets, for “the custom of our rabbis was that they were very guarded and cautious in their words, not to tell most of the Hasidim, almost all of them, except in the way of ethics, to bring them into the covenant of the wise.” His success in attracting thousands to his court was also interpreted as a flaw: “I am afraid that the large number of Hasidim might, perish the thought, by a counsel of the sitra ah.ra [the devil], destroy the wheat within the chaff, may the Merciful One preserve us. For exalted men are few.” As if that were not enough, Abraham Kalisk sent a letter to all the Hasidim, warning them against leaders like Shneur Zalman, “recent arrivals to dwell in honor in our land, and they are famous in their place and take themselves to be exemplary men.” He challenged Shneur Zalman’s authority by interpreting the Tanya as an expression of rationalist thought. The temptation “to build a tower in intellect alone” is to stray from faith, for reason and criticism endanger religion, and one should flee them as before fire. “For the beginning of evil is from the intellect,” he warned, “from it one is attracted to whoring and several

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of the intellectuals were destroyed and abandoned faith.” Simple fear of heaven, free of investigation and criticism, slight exposure to Kabbalistic or rationalistic thinking, and great faith in the wisdom and superiority of the sages, made up the valid worldview that he offered to his Hasidim: “May their feet stand upon great faith, as noted, which is above reason.”38 The tense dialogue between religion and reason continued to reverberate in the 1790s. The reaction against the Enlightenment was palpable in countries for which the political revolution was a true threat. The minister of religion in the government of Friedrich Wilhelm II, the king of Prussia, warned Kant: “You make bad use of your philosophy in deriding major and basic parts of Holy Scripture and Christianity.” If Mendelssohn were still alive, he certainly would have been offended by Kant’s suggestion to the Jews that they should formally adopt Christianity and abandon their religion and its rituals in favor of the religion of reason and ethics, an act that would be tantamount to “the mercy-killing of Judaism” (die Euthanasie des Judenthums).39 Although Shneur Zalman, who had been attacked by Abraham Kalisk, did suggest that rational thought aroused feeling and led to the experience of religious enthusiasm, he also rejected rationalism of the deist variety and saw it as heretical. In Igeret qodesh (The Holy Epistle), which was published after his death as the third part of the Tanya, he wrote that the creation of the world was entirely miraculous, “not like the philosophers, who deny individual providence and imagine in their false imaginations that God’s act in creating heaven and earth is like a human act in its clever schemes.”40 In 1797, the year when the Tanya was published, another unusual and highly influential book, Sefer habrit (The Book of the Covenant), joined in the discussion, marking the boundary between philosophy and religious faith. It was the life’s work of Pinh.as Eliahu Horowitz, a native of Vilna (1765–1821), one of the original Jewish scholars who, at the end of the eighteenth century, with curiosity and enormous wonder observed the changes that were taking place in the world of European thought and science.41 With hundreds of pages of information, Sefer habrit made known to its readers the discoveries, inventions, and exciting innovations that took place in the Age of Enlightenment. However, Horowitz wove these innovations into a threatening and deterring story of heresy, repeatedly admonishing his readers that “there is nothing new that will do good and not sin, therefore be very, very cautious about new things.” Horowitz was very familiar with Haskalah, and in Sefer habrit, he even included a kind of journal of reading in Haskalah literature—a critical and destructive reading, accompanied by a call for religious war. With apprehension, Horowitz showed awareness of the crisis: “Because in truth faith has been destroyed, and fire burns in my bones, the fire of religion and zeal for the Lord of Hosts.”42 Sefer habrit read the

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Haskalah library in a double way, distinguishing between knowledge one could absorb and encompass and dangerous information that threatened religious faith. Ultimately, it was a suspicious and very hostile reading.43 Condemnation of the Haskalah project in Sefer habrit derived from blanket condemnation of the Enlightenment. From the pages of the book, especially the chapter entitled Derekh emuna (“The Way of Faith”), a cry arose to reject philosophical rationalism, to put aside the scientific ethos and the pretention to advance the human race, and to condemn the critique of religion. He repeatedly begs readers to be wary of philosophy, which is unable to supply certain knowledge about the world and is not the purpose of man, and to cling to the directives of the religion and faith without doubts about God. Horowitz actually saw Kant, who defined the Enlightenment as human empowerment and called for dependence on autonomous reason, as corroborating his claim that the basis of philosophy had been destroyed, and it could never pretend any longer to hold absolute truth.44 The counter-project of Sefer habrit was to prove the error of the Enlightenment and, in opposition to it, like his contemporary, Abraham Kalisk, to hold up simple faith, neither susceptible to rational criticism nor eroded by doubt. The great effort that Horowitz invested to turn the readers of his book away from the Enlightenment in general, and in particular from Haskalah, made no small contribution to the erection of barriers and walls by “those who fear for the word of the Lord,” who henceforth consolidated contrarian self-awareness of what they interpreted as the great danger posed to religious faith. In rejecting the ethos of the Enlightenment, Sefer habrit proposes a counter-ethos of obedience and submission to religious authority: “Therefore, you, too, educated reader, try to be a man of faith, full of blessings, and accept the truth from Him who said it, and do not learn in the manner of the gentiles, and do not approach the gate of their house, for all those who enter it will not return, and they will not attain the path of life . . . only thus will your faith be on the side of the tradition [inherited] from the fathers and the Torah.”45 Since the rabbinical elite was not determined enough in the struggle against Haskalah, he took this task upon himself. He viewed the confrontation between “the divine sect” and “the philosophical sect” as an uncompromising war that required a decisive outcome.

“I A m Hu m a n a n d Nothing of Th at W hich Is Hu m a n Is A li en to M e”: Life Stor i e s Horowitz found a real adversary in Solomon Maimon, the Lithuanian prodigy who changed his identity to become a German philosopher. His Giv’at hamore

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(The Guide’s Hill), published in 1791, was a commentary on Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, explaining the development of philosophy and new trends in science and thought from Copernicus to Kant. In almost every passage, Sefer habrit read Giv’at hamore with polemical intent. Horowitz rejected the Enlightenment’s consciousness of progress, as Maimon presented it: “I saw that the philosopher, the author of Giv’at hamore, boasted in the introduction to his commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, saying that theoretical philosophy had reached perfection in our time.” In general, Horowitz saw the developments of philosophy as a long series of mistaken and baseless ideas, which were easy to refute. The philosophers of every generation, including Maimon, were in error, “for they made the basic assumption that there was no finality or end to the power of thought and human intellect, and nothing is denied to it, which it cannot attain.”46 By that time, Maimon had almost entirely removed himself from Jewish society. After the publication of his book on transcendental philosophy, he slammed the door of Haskalah behind him, though Euchel so much wanted to enlist him. Now he addressed a reference group of non-Jewish scholars and philosophers to gain a favorable audience. Nevertheless, in dedicating his book to the king of Poland, he still presented himself as a Jew who was proud of his birth in the kingdom of Poniatowski, the ruler who was known for his support of liberty and development of science.47 The introduction to the second part of his autobiography (1793) was among the most powerful declarations of the individual to reverberate at the end of the eighteenth century. The life story of an obscure person, Maimon asserted, was no less and perhaps more useful than the stories, banal by now, of great men with honorable titles and high positions who were involved in court intrigues, high diplomacy, or wars. The unique value of his story was the uncompromising revelation of truth, according to the principle “I am human and nothing of that which is human is alien to me.” He was not deterred by theologians who thought that the truth was dangerous to religion or by politicians who feared disturbance of the social order. With blunt irony, Maimon added: “I am not, to be sure, a great man, a philosopher for the world, or a buffoon. Nor have I ever suffocated mice, tortured frogs, or made a little man dance by shocking him with electricity. But what does that matter? I love the truth, and where the truth is at stake, I do not ask myself about the devil or his grandmother.” He did something daring, he said. For the sake of truth, he cut himself off from his origins. The story of his life is a story of his spiritual regeneration, solely by means of the “noble audacity in thinking, acknowledging no limits except those of reason.” His publisher Karl Philip Moritz (1756–1793) recommended examples from Maimon’s life to the readers, for “such episodes are important

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not only for the particular fate of a single individual, but also because they shed light on the dignity of human nature and should inspire our reason to be confident in its powers as it strives upward.”48 A different Maimon set out into the 1790s—no longer the Lithuanian and no longer the Maskil, but the German philosopher. His portrait, painted in the 1790s, most likely in honor of the publication of his autobiography, shows a German intellectual with a fashionable hairdo, clean-shaven and bareheaded. In contrast to Horowitz, he doubted the ability of Haskalah to effect a change, particularly because he believed that the rabbinical elite was so well ensconced and powerful that no power on earth could bring it down. Compared to rabbinical culture, whose intellectual achievements were expressed in Halakhic discussions, Maskilic creations seemed meager, miserable, and inferior to him, and one could not expect that the sharp-witted Talmudists would respect it.49 Indeed, several of his closest friends in Berlin, including Friedländer and Lazarus Bendavid, distanced themselves from Haskalah in the 1790s, investing all their ability in the endeavor to attain citizenship in the state and to form a Jewish identity that did not require observance of the practical commandments.50 By then, Maimon was already indifferent to his Jewishness and showed little interest in internal Jewish discussion. The founders of the Society of Friends (Gesellschaft der Freunde), which included Maskilim like Euchel and bankers like Joseph Mendelssohn, invited him to join their ranks in 1792. The new framework answered the need for social encounters among the modernizing group in the Jewish community, and at the same time, it raised the banner of the struggle against the orthodox. Among other things, they took upon themselves the campaign against early burial.51 However, Maimon despised the formalism of the society and was indifferent to its aims.52 When he found himself in financial straits and was unable to publish his philosophical works, Maimon asked Goethe for help (September 2, 1794), painfully describing his isolation, as he had nothing except philosophy.53 The following year, when his benefactor, Samuel Levi, who had supported him until then, withdrew his patronage, Maimon was exiled from Berlin and went to live in the home of another patron, the count Adolf Kalckreuth, on his estate in Silesia. It appears that in fact he had accepted a position of Mendelssohn’s, which he had formerly opposed, namely that the laws of the Jewish religion were also the laws of the “Jewish state,” and a person who had thrown them off has lost his “citizenship.” Whoever wished to depart from the religion and adopt the “pure natural religion” had the right to estrange himself from his people, to abandon the “Jewish state,” and to see himself as a member of “the civil state,” which would accept him as a man. However, the philosophical justification was unable to ward off the

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pain, despair, and bitterness that gnawed at his heart. A few months before his death, Maimon wrote to Bendavid in Berlin, saying he was miserable, without books and without friends. “You ask me, friend, what I am doing here; to my misfortune, almost nothing. Why? Because I receive no encouragement and am cut off from correspondence with scholars and publishers.”54 Maimon’s autobiography, which was intended to exemplify the historical process of human emancipation, was only one radical gaze of a Jew upon himself and his time. How did other Jews, who did not regard their lives as test cases of the upheavals of European history and who never gained fame and publicity, view the last decade of the eighteenth century? What made them suffer, and what were their aspirations? How did the age of revolution influence their fate? One of these was Solomon Bennett (1761–1838), a native of Polotsk, in White Russia. Bennett wished to become an artist and, like Maimon, was one of the Jewish migrants who left Poland to pursue a dream. He saw the eighteenth century as a turning point in Jewish history that put an end to their prolonged oppression with the First Partition of Poland. However, Katherine’s prohibition against running taverns and distilling alcohol was a harsh edict; it dragged many Jews down into poverty and injured him personally. The regulations of 1786 impelled him to leave Poland in order to study art, which became the goal of his life. At the age of thirty, he left his wife and children. Unlike Maimon, he did so with their consent. In the story of his life, Bennett explained: “My natural zeal for studies which at that time surpassed my understanding, fortune, and my natural tendency toward my family, parents, and relations, impelled me to prepare for my journey.” In 1792, he traveled through Riga to Copenhagen to study painting. After only a year, he claims that he received a letter from the director of the Royal Danish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, praising his excellence as an engraver. He saw Denmark as many times preferable to Poland. The Danes were friendly to foreigners, and “the Jews inhabiting this kingdom enjoy also the full freedom of incorporated citizens, to bear in general public burthens and duties; and to share also the commonwealth with their cohabitant nation.” A disastrous fire on August 5, 1795, cut short his studies. News of the fire spread through all of Europe. Trebitsch also spoke about the damage it caused in his Hebrew chronicle: “In the city of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, a flaming fire broke out, aside from the fire of last year, which damaged the king’s palace, and its damages cost thirty million thalers, and now the destruction by fire . . . is fourteen hundred houses were burned down in two days.” Part of the building of the academy where Bennett had been studying also burned down. He completed his studies with great success in Berlin. He specialized in engraving and received letters of recommendation

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from the king and queen, as well as official recognition from the Prussian royal academy on October 14, 1797. However, Prussia was not his final destination. Apart from several scholars who flourished there and a few wealthy families who were privileged, one could not ignore that “the Jews were excluded from the natural rights of mankind.” Bennett refused to live under oppression, and at the end of the century, he went on to London, the city of liberty, where he chose to settle. In the story of his life, he wrote that one must hope that the Jews of Germany would also gain liberty, instead of merely being “tolerated and kept by the respective Princes like a spunge, to imbibe, and be pressed out again on any occasion.”55 The basic experience in the life of another immigrant to Germany, the ritual slaughterer Moshe Wasserzug, was the decline in his social status. He spent his childhood in the villages of Skoki and Kornik in Poland, and his abilities started him on the path of Torah scholars until his father died. His mother could not support him, and he left the house, joining the ranks of unfortunate Jews. Wasserzug wrote about the feeling of shame because of his economic deprivation in his Hebrew diary: “I said to myself, let me go now to a country of other people, who do not know me, and I will become a ritual slaughterer and teacher there.” At this moment of crisis, “the look of my face told me that I had fallen far downward.” His life mission was henceforth to establish himself and climb back up the social ladder. Wasserzug studied slaughtering for nine months in Poznan, and in his memoirs, he expressed pride in the expertise he had acquired. It turned out that the kosher meat business was sensitive; it required knowledge of Halakha and skillful hands. There was also tension between slaughterers and butchers. They often faced a conflict between financial loss and observance of Jewish law. He told about an incident when “a butcher took an axe in his hand and stood behind the slaughterer when he wanted to examine the lungs to see whether the animal was kosher or traif. The slaughterer noticed it and said, ‘kosher, kosher,’ and as soon as he went outside, he shouted loudly, ‘traif, traif,’ and when the butcher heard it he ran after the slaughterer, and the slaughterer ran away from him.” After that confrontation, they set aside a room for slaughtering and another one for butchering in Poznan. Wasserzug moved to Germany, and at the fair in Frankfurt on the Oder, during the 1780s, he found work in the town of Greifenhagen, in western Pomerania. Only about eighty Jews lived there, and he served them in a variety of clerical positions: slaughterer, cantor, teacher, and supervisor of the construction of the synagogue. After saving up about three hundred thalers, he returned to his wife and children in Skoki, but he apparently disappointed his family. His wife reprimanded him, he wrote, because he hadn’t succeeded in bringing gifts for his children: “I am surprised

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at you, my beloved, that you did not bring them anything, though it is a small thing for you, it is large in the eyes of the tender children.” The second Partition of Poland in 1793 was a blessing for him. Because he knew Polish and German, his economic situation improved. He described the opportunity that came his way: “After I went to Kornik, the King of Prussia took the country of Poland for himself as a possession, and there was no one among all the residents of the city who could speak their language, because they had not gotten used to it, and I was a translator for them, and I was well regarded by the Prussians, especially for the excise tax on slaughtering. . . . I was their eyes in their dealings according to the manners of the king.” As the official in charge of the meat tax, he also earned considerable income and acquired social prestige. After three years, Wasserzug was able to retire from his work as a slaughterer, and in his final destination, in Płock, he became a businessman and the owner of an inn, which produced sufficient profits for him to feel that he had indeed succeeded in rehabilitating his life and risen back up to his status.56 In contrast to him, Isaac Thannhauser, who was born in Altenstadt, Bavaria, in 1774 and wished to become a scholar, was defeated in his life’s battle. Selfpity and frustration cry out from the pages of his autobiography. As he was the only son out of five children, his family invested heavily in his education and also sent him to a German school: “My parents, who dedicated me to studies, pinned a brilliant future on me, as I had ability and excellence in studies.” As with Wasserzug, Thannhauser’s father fell ill and died when he was close to BarMitzvah age, putting an end to that: “With his perishing, all my educational program perished.” Relatives seized his inheritance, and the guardian to whom he was sent intimidated him, exploited his weakness, and made him work as a servant. They sent him out to make a living as a peddler, though he wasn’t suitable for that. As a teenager, he traveled with an escort who starved him and made him work as a porter. He believed that all his happiness depended on his having the strength to carry a heavy burden. He was in great pain: “To such a depth can a young orphan be humiliated by people with no conscience, because of their steel heart. I, the son of a father noble of thought, who was inculcated only with fine and elevated thoughts, was forced to allow people to enslave me with the lowest kind of work.” In the home of his uncle in Ichenhausen, the torments continued. Thannhauser recalled: “In that house I was given the mentality of slaves.” He had to obey all the orders of his uncle and his wife. After a year and a half, he was hired out as a servant for a decent man named Eli Hirsch. But in a short time he reverted to being a peddler, wandering among villages for two years in “this most humiliating of situations . . . carrying a miserable backpack and selling to peasants.” Even after he grew older and became an independent

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merchant, he felt abandoned and neglected in a world without a living soul he could depend on. Nor did his sisters help him, and he wept frequently: “Oh Father! You supported the falling, you consoled widows, you supported orphans, if you only knew how people are treating me, your spirit would fill with anger and rage!” Thannhauser found some consolation in religion. At last he settled in Fellheim and supported himself as a teacher. There he was also persuaded to accept an arranged marriage that he didn’t want. At the wedding, everyone was merry except him. He wrote, “With pleasure I would exchange my position for that of a galley slave.”57 The life story of Nechemia Judah Leib, another immigrant from Poland and a contemporary of Wasserzug’s and Bennett’s, was no less gloomy. Apparently written in Hebrew or Yiddish and translated into German, his account was used as testimony or a confession when he was put on trial for robbery and attempted murder. He was born in 1759 in the village of Strykow, in central Poland, to parents who saw to his education, but he could not continue studying because he was forced to make a living. He worked as a teacher and later mainly as a servant and a groom who took care of horses. Finally he became a beggar wandering throughout Germany. At one of the crossroads of his life, he even converted to Christianity, but he changed his mind, because he wished to die as a Jew. He only wanted to return to his home in Poland, but the tolls he had to pay at various stages on the roads of Germany impoverished him. At a toll station of one bridge he fell into despair of his life and almost threw himself into the river. In a desperate step, he attacked the man who was traveling with him, an old Jewish beggar named Shlomo Nathan, because he didn’t want to return to Poland penniless. “I threw the old man down onto the ground, tore his trousers, and I said to him, give me the money right away or I’ll stab you with my knife, but I didn’t intend to harm him, only to take the money, because of paying customs.” The knife wasn’t even real. When men on horses came after hearing Nathan’s shouts, Nechemia said he was his father and the money belonged to him. He was arrested, concealed nothing in his interrogation, and was imprisoned in Saarmund, near Potsdam, awaiting his verdict. On August 16, 1790, he was sentenced to lashes and life in prison with hard labor. The author of an article in a German publication reporting on crimes and trials showed empathy and advised his readers to understand the miserable life of Nechemia Leib with sympathy. The unbearable pressure placed on the Jews, who were forced again and again to buy passes and to pay body duties and tolls for roads and bridges, ultimately led them to commit desperate acts, ending in robbery and murder.58 An entirely different case was that of Deborah, the wife of Zalman Traub, in Hamburg, who was found guilty of the double murder of her mother-in-law and

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sister-in-law. Deborah Traub, the daughter of Isaac Hirsch of Berlin, was born in 1769. She was the granddaughter of a “Silk Jew,” the manufacturer Hirsch David, a member of an elite family of Prussian Jews. Deborah moved to Hamburg, married Zalman Traub, and lived in the same house as her mother- and sister-in-law, her brother’s wife. All the witnesses at her trial, her neighbors and servants, testified that the family lived in full harmony and praised Deborah’s virtues as a decent and magnanimous woman. No one could explain why she had one day bought rat poison and mixed it in the soup and beer she served at breakfast on March 16, 1790, causing her mother- and sister-in-law’s death. Had she suffered because of her mother-in-law? Had she quarreled only with her sister-in-law, so that her mother-in-law died only because that morning she ate soup rather than her usual cup of coffee? The defense lawyers at the trial hired experts to claim that Deborah was not responsible for her actions, because she suffered from psychological problems, especially depression, and she had acted from insanity. Perhaps childhood trauma was intensified because of her pregnancy, and perhaps excessive reading of novels made her sad and distracted. Advancing a modern argument in her defense, taken from the context of the times, the fashionable desire for reading (Lesewuth) among women was seen as a cause of mental illness. This defense delayed but did not manage to mitigate the sentence. The municipal authorities acceded to the request of the lay leaders of the community to send rabbis to her cell, to study and pray with her on the night before her execution. They reported that she repented completely for all her sins. Traub was only twenty-four years old when she was decapitated in Hamburg on February 4, 1793, and buried on the spot. With agreement but in secret, the women of the burial society recovered the parts of her body and reinterred them according to Jewish law.59 On July 6, 1793, stockbroker Wolf Wahl was buried in a humiliating manner in Frankfurt, one of the autonomous community’s last demonstrations of power. As public punishment for the permissiveness of his conduct and freedom of his opinions, his body was thrown into the grave by street urchins in an area of the cemetery set aside for beggars and people of the most contemptible class, those who committed suicide or died of venereal disease. His family was furious and asked the authorities to intervene. The rabbis claimed they had a right to bury him in disgrace, because “the aforementioned Wolf was taken in our community to be completely wicked, and he never went to any synagogue where men pray in public either on weekdays or on the Sabbath and festivals. . . . And it was publicly known that he violated the holy Sabbath and did business on it as on ordinary days.” However, the mayor of Frankfurt accepted the family’s petition, fined the burial society, and threatened to imprison its heads if they

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did not transfer the body to a respectable grave site. The community’s surrender to the authorities showed that it was now possible for individuals to act as they wished, even if their permissiveness conflicted with the norms of the religion.60 Rabbi Shaul Levin, the son of the rabbi of the Berlin community, did not wait for people to persecute him. He published a book of Halakhic responsa, Besamim rosh (1793), containing an explosive charge that threatened to blow up the fabric of rabbinic culture, in that he placed the eighteenth-century ethos of happiness on a collision course with commitment to Jewish law. He wrote, “Perish the thought that the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth, should hate his creatures. . . . But he gave them this perfect Torah and its commandments, which lead to happiness and wholeness, goodness and pleasure.” However, “if, perish the thought, it were possible to imagine that the time might come when the judgments of the Torah and its commandments were bad for our nation . . . or even that there might be a possibility of imagining that no happiness might come of them in any way, we would remove the yoke from our necks.” He paid a heavy price for his daring. Cohen led the campaign against him, enlisting colleagues among the rabbinical elite of Central Europe. The rabbi of Oettingen, Jacob Katzenellenbogen, for example, said that Levin had “poured corrosive poison on the whole body and all the tenets of our faith.” Levin’s father did his best to defend his son, who went to London, the city of refuge that Bennett had also chosen. At a stopover in Halle, he wrote a will in which he said of anyone who found his writings, “far be it from them to take any page and read it.” The writings were all to be sent to his family in Berlin. He finished painfully: “These are the words of a bitter soul, who was made to drink a cup of wormwood.” His tragic life, in which he was torn by the tension between his erudition in Torah and membership in the rabbinic elite and his criticism and religious skepticism, which brought him close to the Maskilim of Berlin, did indeed end in London late in 1794. A Hebrew poem eulogizing him reads, “They fired arrows at you, [but] wisdom will not stumble, and it will flourish.”61 Rabbi H.aim David Azulai belonged to the Torah elite that feared heretics and defended what it saw as the purity of the religion. This emissary from the Land of Israel finished his journeys and settled in Livorno for the last years of his life. He married there and served as a crossroads for other emissaries, writing books and giving sermons. For example, on the eve of Passover, 1792, he castigated the merchants of the city because of their addiction to amusements such as the theater, pleasure trips, and card games: “In the time when they are free, they read external and heretical books . . . and some of them are infected by the French disease and the Italian wine.” He threatened them with the punishments of hell. Azulai was also involved in an affair that once again ignited the

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dispute between the conservatives and the religiously permissive. An item in a German newspaper, the Altonaischer Mercurius, of April 8, 1796, reported about a rabbinical council in Florence, which apparently decided on far-reaching religious reforms, including moving the Sabbath to Sunday and canceling the prohibition against shaving men’s beards as well as that against eating pork, claiming that “a large number of Jews desire this.” The news spread rapidly, and concerned voices reached Italy from Germany and Denmark. A denial was issued from Florence, and the rabbinical elite in Italy responded with a series of letters published in Hebrew and German, clearing it of all suspicion. The rabbis of Florence, Rome, and Livorno protested that they were loyal to the Halakha: “The remnant of Israel will not commit any sin to cancel even half a precept of our holy Torah with any statement.” Azulai added his voice and authority to the denial issued from Livorno with an orthodox declaration: “Everything that was heard and written is the opposite and lies to all their words, a ludicrous distortion of the truth . . . and we, in the name of the Lord our God, will remind [you] to guard and keep his holy Torah.”62 Rabbi Moshe Sofer, a native of Frankfurt (1762–1839) and a disciple of Rabbi Nathan Adler, who was to become the leader of conservative, anti-modern Judaism, had already begun to sharpen his weapons against “the new.” In his very first rabbinical post as the young rabbi of the community of Dresnitz (Strážnice), Moravia, he gave a public sermon every year on the eighth of Tevet, the date when the Torah was translated into Greek, while the criticism of “The Biur,” by Mendelssohn and his colleagues, reverberated in the background. At the end of 1795, he consolidated the basic position of orthodoxy in defense against the heretics who rebelled against religious discipline, “for ever since heresy descended into the world, the lawless among our nation increased, leaning with a rebellious shoulder to avoid heeding the judge.” In his sermon, MosheSofer reprimanded the members of his community for not contributing money to maintain the schools, and, taking a pessimistic view of the time, he stated that, contrary to the Enlightenment image, “surely we have had enough of these bestial weapons and anger, the days of darkness.”63 Another of Adler’s students was Sekl Loeb Wormser (1768–1847), who became known in the early part of the nineteenth century as the Ba’al Shem of Michelstadt. Many people made their way to him, expecting a cure and salvation by means of magic. At the age of thirty, he adopted an ascetic way of life and stopped trimming his beard. However, in his diary, he revealed the tension, if not the rift, between a Ba’al Shem who distributed amulets and a young Jew whose spirit inclined to German philosophy and who admired Mendelssohn and believed in freedom of knowledge: “One must not restrict wisdom, that is

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to say, what is to be studied and what is needed and what is not needed, and one must neither permit nor prohibit, because the generations change and are transformed, and the change in interpretation grips them.”64 The political mentor of Jacob Rey (1753–1824) in London was none other than the famous revolutionary Thomas Paine, who was his neighbor during the 1770s. Rey was educated in the school for poor Spanish and Portuguese boys. His father, a peddler, apparently arrived from North Africa or Gibraltar. Rey, an ambitious young man, made his way to the top of English society, but on the way, he was put on trial, was the focus of gossip and slander, and expressed his opinions bravely in political discussions. To conceal his Jewishness, he changed his name to John King, made a fortune as a moneylender whose aristocratic clients were pleasure-seekers from high society, and worked as a notary in the gray area of businesses that demanded quite a bit of sophistication. His wife, Sara Nunes, belonged to the high class of Sephardim. At the same time, he had relations with other women, the longest being with Jane Isabela, who was fifteen years his senior and the daughter of a Protestant aristocrat. He learned critical politics from Paine, and when the French Revolution broke out, he supported it. However, from 1792 on, he opposed it and called for protecting the institutions of government. In correspondence published in London newspapers, he told Paine that the English, who until then had been an example to all of Europe, must not become apes of the French. He asked: If the French had overthrown a bad government, must we overthrow a good one? The revolutionaries had slaughtered half the citizens and established a savage republic, putting the king and queen on trial and becoming oppressors. They had gone from being a nation that sought to make others happy to being a nation who spoiled their happiness. For his part, Paine was amazed to see how his disciple had changed his opinions from top to bottom. Suddenly, he who had always argued against exploiters was supporting royalty. Rey/King’s identity was vague and changeable. In 1795, he took an oath on the New Testament in court and claimed that he had converted to Christianity, but a few years later, he insisted on swearing on the Old Testament and defended his Jewishness in an autobiographical work. Many people asked him about his religion, he wrote, and his answer was that everyone defined God according to his imagination. With the self-confidence of an English Jew who did not hesitate to make his political voice heard and to defend himself, Rey wove the story of his life into his defense when he was put on trial for allegedly attacking two prostitutes. He produced the women’s confession that they had fabricated the plot for money, he criticized the judge, and he decried prejudices and the sensation-seeking newspaper writers. He saw himself as an example of an individual standing

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alone against the judicial system and public opinion, and he alluded to the revolutionary context of the highly unjust situation to which he was subject. If laws were biased and became instruments of torture, he said, then people were living under a sword of Damocles. He wondered if people could still count on the institutions of the state to remain stable, after seeing the example of recent events. He asked if they had not just seen a mighty kingdom suddenly fall to pieces. His enemies, he claimed, were envious of him because his success was due to his talents and not to his birth.65 Although in his dispute with Paine, Rey criticized the extremism of the French revolutionaries, he made a revolutionary demand of public opinion: to be accepted as an independent, self-made individual whose Judaism, in the form that he gave it, was part of his identity. Along with Maimon, the rebel who left Judaism behind, Levin, the subversive critic, Bennett, who studied art, Wahl, who was free in his opinions, and even Wasserzug, the ritual slaughterer who exploited his command of languages to climb the social ladder, Rey, whose life story was painted in the bright colors of the call for liberty, equality, and the rights of the individual, belonged to that turbulent decade.

Note s 1. See Percy Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1937), 257–259. 2. See Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), ch. 21; Krystina Zienkowska, “῾The Jews Have Killed a Tailor’: The Socio-Political Background of a Riot in Warsaw in 1790,” Polin 3 (1998): 78–101. 3. See Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), ch. 2; Adolf Haber, “Hapundaqaim hayehudim bapublitsistiqa hapolanit shel hasejm hagadol (1788–1792),” Gal’ed 2 (1978): 1–24; Israel Halperin, “Rabi levi yitsh.aq miberditschev ugezerot hamalkhut beyamav,” in Yehudim veyahadut bemizrah. eiropa (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1969), 340–347; Artur Ziegelman, “Al hatsa’otav shel tsir hasejm hagadol, matiush butremovitsh, letiqun hayehudim bepolin uvelita uteguvat raba shel q’q h.elma,” in Bein yisrael laumot, ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), 87–100; Ya’akov Goldberg, “Mishtadlanut lemedinaut: netsigei haqehilot betequfat sejm arba’ hashanim (1788–1792),” in Hah. evra hayehudit bemamlekhet polin-lita (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1999), 217–231; Imanuel Ringelblum, “An afklang fun der frantsoizisher revalutsia,” in Kapiteln geshikhte fun amalikan yidishen leben in poilen (Buenos Aires: Tsentral verband fun poilishe jiden in aregentina, 1953), 173–179; Meir Balaban, Toldot hayehudim bekrakov ubekazhimiezh, 1304–1868,

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vol. 2, Hebrew trans. Tsofia Lesman, ed. Ya’aqov Goldberg (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2002), ch. 28; Artur Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Jews in Poland, 1780–1870 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 67–112; Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Littman Library, 2010), 210–222; David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History Across Five Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), ch. 6; Adam Teller, “Tradition and Crisis? EighteenthCentury Critiques of the Polish-Lithuanian Rabbinate,” Jewish Social Studies 17, no. 3 (2011): 12–15. 4. See N. M. Gelbar, “Mendel lefin satanover vehatsa’otav letiqun orah. h.ayim shel yehudei polin bifnei hasejm hagadol (1788–1792),” in Sefer yovel likhvod harav d”r avraham weiss (New York: Festschrift Committee, 1964), 271–301; Riety van Luit, “Hasidism, Mitnaggdim and the State in M. N. Lefin ῾Essai d’un plan de réforme,’” Zutot 3 (2001): 188–195; Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004). 5. See Adam Zamoyski, Poland, A History (London: William Collins, 2009), ch. 13. 6. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, par. 107. 7. Ibid; Yosef Qarmish, “Yehudei varsha bemered qushtsioshki,” in Sefer hayovel mugash likhvod d”r n”m gelber (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1963), 221–229; See also Balaban, Toldot hayehudim beqraqov uveqashimeizh, 1304–1868, 851–854; Pinchas Kohn, A yidishe shtim tsum oifshtand 1794 in vilne (Vilna: D. Krejnes, 1933); Israel Bartal, “Giborim o mogei lev: yehudim batsevaot shel polin (1794–1863),” in Qozak uvedui, “‘am” ve “arets” baleumiut hayehudit (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2007), 52–67; Anna M. Rosner, “Jewish Participation in the Kosciuszko Uprising,” Polish Review 59, no. 3 (2014): 57–71; Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland, ch. 25. 8. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 120; Bartal, “Giborim o mogei lev,” 56–59. 9. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 132. 10. Shir renen usimh. a leyom hemelikhu bo et adoneinu hamelekh haadir vehah. asid fridrikh vilhelm hasheni ‘al meh. ozot polin hagedola (Poznan, 1793); Gesange der Freude am Tage der Holdigung des . . . Königs und Herrn Friedrich Wilhelm des Zweiten (Posen, 1793). 11. See Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, 135; Albert Breuer, Geschichte der Juden in Preussen (1750–1820) (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1991), ch. 6; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 226–229. 12. See Plonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1, 335–337; David E. Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 82–83; John Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia, 1772–1825 (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 74–80.

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13. Richard Beer to William Pitt (November 10, 1790), in Cecil Roth, AngloJewish Letters (London: Soncino, 1938), 201–204; Richard Brothers, A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (London: Unknown, 1794); Moses Gomez Pereira, The Jew’s Appeal on the Divine Mission of Richard Brothers and N. B. Halhed, Esq., to Restore Israel and Rebuild Jerusalem (London: Unknown, 1795); see also Meir Verta, “Ra’ayon shivat tsion bamah.shava haprotestantit beanglia bashanim 1790–1840,” Zion 33 (1968): 215–237; Cecil Roth, The Nephew of the Almighty: An Experimental Account of the Life and Aftermath of Richard Brothers (London: E. Goldston, 1933); Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (An Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 65–67; David Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewish Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 135–136; David Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 311–313. 14. Elyakim Ben Avraham, Maamar bina la’itim (London: David ben Mordecai, 1795), 26b. See Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key, 188–200. 15. See the correspondence between Washington and the Jewish communities in 1789–1790 in Morris Schappes, ed., A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654–1875 (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 77–84. 16. See the letters of Rebecca Samuel in Jacob R. Marcus, American Jewry, Documents, Eighteenth Century (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1959), 51–54. 17. See N. M. Gelber, “Brody,” in Arim veimaut beyisrael, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1956), ch. 10; Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, par. 139. 18. Ismar Freund, Die Emanzipation der Juden in Preussen, vol. 1 (Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1912), 50–54; ibid., vol. 2, 91–96; Ludwig Geiger, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin, vol. 2 (Berlin: J. Guttenberg, 1871), 147–150. See David Friedländer, AktenStücke die Reform der Jüdischen Kolonien in der Preussischen Staaten betreffend, in Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Uta Lohmann (Köln: Böhlau, 2013), 37–168. See also Hilde Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein: A Daughter of the Enlightenment, 1758–1818 (New York: Berg, 1991), ch. 5; Steven Lowenstein, The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770–1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 77–83; Uta Lohmann, David Friedländer, Reformpolitik im Zeichen von Aufklärung und Emanzipation (Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2013), 170–184. 19. “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 7, no. 4 (1797): 382–383 (letter from Amsterdam dated September 8, 1797), the text of the law is in the German appendix, 25–28. On Friedrichsfeld, see Dan Michman, “David fridrikhsfeld, maskil veloh.em emantsipatsia,” Meh. qarim ‘al toldot yahadut holand 1 (1975): 151–199. 20. Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, pars. 121, 123; Ele divrei habrit, hah. uqim vehamishpatim asher bein adam leadam . . . beyom 31 yanuar bishnat 1795 (Amsterdam, 1795). See Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813 (New York: Knopf, 1977).

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21. Elh.anan Tal, ed., Haqehila haashkenazit beamsterdam bamea hayod-h. et (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2010), 215–226. 22. See A. Half, “Diyunei haasefa haleumit shel harepubliqa habatavit bidvar emantsipatsia layehudim, 1796,” Meh. qarim ‘al toldot yahadut holand 1 (1975): 201– 240; Joseph Michman, The History of Dutch Jewry during the Emancipation Period, 1787–1815 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 23–30, 54–58; Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, ch. 8. 23. Tsevi Hirsch of Ilfeld, Sefer divrei negidim (Amsterdam: Proops, 1799); David Friedrichsfeld, Zot h. anukhat habayit: beit haknesset shel ‘adat yeshurun (Amsterdam: Yochanan Levi Rofe, 1797). 24. Yitsh.aq Ben Avraham Ger, Sefer zera’ yitsh. aq (Amsterdam: Proops, 1789), introduction; See Yehuda Leib Levisohn, “Mishpat gerei tsedeq mimedinat shveden,” Bikurim 2 (1865): 78–88; Asaf Yedidya, “Demuto hahistorit shel harav yitsh.aq ben avraham gar (garnboom) miamsterdam,” Zion 86 (2021): 231–261. 25. “Ma’ase nisim,” in Napoleon utequfato: reshumot ve’eduyuot ‘ivriot shel bnei hador, ed. Barukh Mevorakh (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1968), 17–31; Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim, pars. 137–138, 140, 147, 151, 158. See also Geoffrey Symcox, “The Jews of Italy in the Triennio Giacobino,” in Acculturation and Its Discontents: The Italian Jewish Experience between Exclusion and Inclusion, ed. David Myers et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 148–163; Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, ch. 8. 26. “Ma’ase nisim,” 17–36; Yishm’ael Hacohen, Sefer zera’ emet, vol. 3 (Reggio: Unknown, 1823), 39b–42a. See Shlomo Simonson, “Teguvot ah.adot shel yehudei italia ‘al ‘haemantsipatsia harishona’ ve’al hahaskala,” Italia yudaika 3 (1989): 47– 68; Shlomo Simonson, Toldot hayehudim bedukasut mantova, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1963), 70–71; Federica Francesconi, “From Ghetto to Emancipation: The Role of Moise Formiggini,” Jewish History 24 (2010): 331–354. 27. See Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 146–147; Riccardo Calimani, The Ghetto of Venice, trans. Katherine Silberblatt Wolfthal (Milan: M. Evans, 2005), ch. 22. 28. See A. Freimann and F. Kracauer, Frankfurt (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929), 180–182; Calimani, The Ghetto of Venice, ch. 22. 29. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-Besht], The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993), 3–4. 30. See Uriel Gelman, Hashvilim hayotsim milublin: tsemih. ata shel hah. asidut bepolin (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2018), ch. 1; Shimon Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), ch. 5. 31. “Taqanot deliazna,” in Igrot qodesh me’et k”q admo”r hazaqen, ed. Shalom Dober Levin (Brooklin: Karnei Hod Tora, 1980), 53–84. See Immanuel Etkes,

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Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of Chabad Hasidism (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014). 32. Nathan Sternherz of Nemirov, Yemei moharan (Beit Shemesh: Unknown, 2005), 423–424. See also Ada Rapaport-Albert, “Hatenua’ hah.asidit ah.arei shnat 1772: Retsef mivni utemura,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Socological Aspects of Hasidism, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001), 266–265. 33. Sefer tsavaat meariba’sh vehanhagot yesharot (Zolkiew: Unknown, 1793). See David Biale, “The Displacement of Desire in Eighteenth Century Hasidism,” in Eros and the Jews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), ch. 6. 34. Shneur Zalman, Sefer liqutei amarim, part 1, Sefer habeinonim (Sławuta: Ber Ben Israel, 1796). See Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, ch. 4; Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 232–241. 35. On the third dispute, see Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 243–257; Mordecai Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem bashanim 5532– 5575 (1772–1815), vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 180–209. 36. See Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, 181–184. 37. Ibid., 185–203. 38. Ibid., 205–208; “Igrot r. avraham miqalisq miteveria ler’ shneur zalman milady velah.asidim beh.uts laarets,” in Igrot h. asidim meerets yisrael, ed. Jacob Barnai (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1980), 238–247; Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, ch. 9. 39. Immanuel Kant, Der Streit der Fakultäten (Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius, 1798), ix–xi, 79–81. 40. Shneur Zalman of Liady, Liqutei amarim ‘im igeret hateshuva veigeret haqodesh (Brooklyn: Karnei Hod Tora, 1984), 277–288. 41. Pinh.as Eliyahu Hurwitz, Sefer habrit (Brno: n.p., 5557 [1797]); Quotations here are taken from: Pinchas Eliahu Berabi Meir Mivilna, Sefer habrit hashalem (Jerusalem: Yarid Hasefarim, 1990). See David B. Ruderman, A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinhas Hurwitz and its Remarkable Legacy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). 42. Ibid., part 1, article 20, ch. 31, 376; ch. 19, 347. 43. Ibid., article 8, ch. 4, 126. 44. Ibid., article 20, ch. 25, 364. 45. Ibid., article 20, ch. 6, 323; ch. 20, 349–364; ch. 33, 383. 46. Ibid., article 10, ch. 15, 189; article 20, ch. 25, 362–363; article 21, chs. 6–7, 392–393; article 2, ch. 6, 41–42. See Sefer more nevukhim leharav hagadol hah. oqer haelohi hah. akham rabenu moshe ben maimon and the commentary Giv’at hamore (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1791); Giv’at hamore leshlomo maimon (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1966).

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47. Salomon Maimon, Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie (Berlin: C.F. Voss, 1790). 48. The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Abraham P. Socher, trans. Paul Reitter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 121–125, xxxvii. 49. Ibid., 235–237. 50. Ibid., 108–112. 51. See L. Lesser, Chronik der Gesellschaft der Freunde in Berlin (Berlin: Petsch, 1842). 52. Sabattia Joseph Wolff, Maimoniana, oder Rhapsodien zur Charakteristik Salomon Maimons (Berlin: G. Hayn, 1813), 151–153. 53. Günter Schulz, “Salomon Maimon und Goethe,” Goethe: Viermonatsschrift der Goethe Gesellschaft 16 (1954): 272–288. 54. The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, 202–203; Yitzhak Melamed, “Two Letters by Salomon Maimon on Fichte’s Philosophy and on Kant’s Anthropology and Mathematics,” International Yearbook of German Idealism 9 (2011): 379–387 (the letter of May 24, 1800, on 385–386). 55. Solomon Bennett, The Constancy of Israel (London: W.H. Wyatt, 1809), 214–228. See Arthur Barnett, “Solomon Bennett, 1761–1838: Artist, Hebraist and Controversialist,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 17 (1951–1952): 91–111. 56. “Qorot moshe vasertsug,” Jahrbuch der Jüdisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft 8 (1910): 87–114. SeeJacob Goldberg, “Al sefer hazikhronot shel moshe vasertsug, shoh.et bepolin gadol,” in Hah. evra hayehudit bemamlekhet polin-lita (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1999), 289–298. 57. Isaac Thannhauser, Kurze Lebensbeschreibung [Feldheim, 1810?], Leo Baeck Archive, New York. 58. “Der Jude Nehemias Jehuda Leib, raubt, um den Leibzoll zu erschwingen,” Annalen der Gesetzgebung und Rechtsgelehrtsamkeit 7 (1791): 131–169; See Elliot Oring, ed., The First Book of Jewish Jokes: The Collection of L.M. Büschentahl, trans. Michaela Lang (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 88–97. 59. Johann H. Misler, Defensionschrift in Sachen der peinlich angeklagten Devora Traub gebohrnen Hirsch (Hamburg: Harmsen, 1793); M. Grunwald, Hamburgs deutsche Juden (Hamburg: A. Janssen, 1904), 125–126; Julia Saatz, “Female Poisoners in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” in Poison and Poisoning in Science: Fiction and Cinema, ed. Heike Kippel, Bettina Wahrig, and Anke Zechner (Berlin: Palgrave, 2017), 15–36 (esp. 26). 60. Andreas Guzman, “‘Hatora omnam tova akh hi netuna biyedei ganavim uviryonim’: ‘al hayerivut bein maskilim levin rabanim besof hameah ha-18,” in “Hahistoria hagermanit yehudit sheyarashnu”: germanim tse’irim kotvim historia yehudit, ed. Henry Wasserman (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2004), 11–35.

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61. Shmuel Ben Tsvi Hirsch [Levin], Sefer sheelot uteshuvot besamim rosh (Berlin: Orientalische Buchdruckerei, 1793). The will was published by Yosef Meir of London: Literaturblatt des Orients 5 (1844): 712–713. 62. Yosef H.ayim David Azulai, Sefer kise david (Livorno: Saadon, 1794), fols. 74–78; Azulai, Sefer yosef omets, sheelot uteshuvot (Jerusalem: Weinberger, 1961), sig. 7; “Toldot hazman,” Hameasef 7, no. 3 (1796): 271–273. See Avraham Ya’ari, Sheluh. ei erets yisrael (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1951), 579–580; Avraham Vaknin, “Mikhtavei rabanei italia neged reformei germania bishnat 5556,” Tsefunot 5 (1950): 83–88; Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 142–145. 63. Moshe Sofer, “Drush leh.et tevet . . . po dreznitz 5556,” Drashot mirabeinu h.atam sofer, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Hatam Sofer Institute, 1974), fols. 70–72. See Maoz Kahana, “Keitsad biqesh hah.atam sofer lenatseah. et shpinoza? teqst, lamdanut, veromantiqa beketivat hah.atam sofer,” Tarbiz 79 (2011): 557–585. 64. See Meir Hildesheimer, Ba’al shem mimichelstadt (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute, 1983); Karl A. Grozinger, “Zeqel leib vurmser ba’al hashem mimichelstadt,” in Yahadut: sugiot, qeta’im, panim, zehuyot—sefer rivka, ed. Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2007), 501–510. 65. Mr. King’s Speech at Egham, with Thomas Paine’s Letter to him and Mr. King’s Reply (Egahm: Unknown, 1793); Mr. John King’s Apology, or a Reply to his Calumniators (London: Printed for J. Downes, 1798). And see Todd M. Endelman, “The Chequered Career of Jew King: A Study in Anglo-Jewish Social History,” in From East and West: Jews in Changing Europe 1750–1870, ed. Frances Malino and Sorkin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 151–181.

eighteen

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THE THREE L AST YEARS “We Have Reason to Congratulate Ourselves, That We Were Born in This Enlightened Period”

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828) changed his style. Under the influence of a precarious state of mind, severe deafness, hallucinations, and fears, he published a series of eighty small etchings, which he called Los Caprichos, strange fantasies. The artist who until then had been a servant of the state, the Church, and the aristocracy and who had even been the royal court painter became subversive, endowed with the social sensitivity and ardor of a reformer. In Goya’s kaleidoscope, more than anything, human and supernatural evil appears in the figure of prostitutes, clergymen, witches, and evil goblins. A human head is served to avaricious and exploitative monks; donkeys ride on people, who groan under oppression in a picture that identified with the social protest of the revolution; and miserable victims of the Inquisition are depicted in chains, with pointed hats on their heads, riding on a donkey and surrounded by a jeering crowd. Aware of the presence of the imagination and the irrational in the darkness of the human soul, in Los Caprichos Goya created a bridge between the Enlightenment and its critique, and this was one of the signs of the turning toward romanticism in European culture. In Tim Blanning’s words: “In short, if Goya really was pursuing an enlightened agenda, he was doing it by means of a romantic vocabulary.”1

“Oh, Cent u ry! Com e, Begin, Y e s, Begin You r Cou r se!”: Dr e a ms a n d Nightm a r e s The best known and most prominent of the etchings in Los Caprichos is number 43, entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The artist has fallen asleep at his desk, and around him throng threatening bats, owls, and a black cat. This is

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both an expression of penetrating criticism and warning against the usurpation of power by ignorance and prejudice and also the liberation of the dark forces in the dreaming human soul, which will henceforth characterize romantic culture. Goya himself explained the meaning of his work: “The author is dreaming. His only purpose is to banish the harmful ideas, which many people believe, and by means of Los Caprichos to perpetuate his solid testimony to the truth.”2 Seventeen years earlier, Mendelssohn had already warned against the rule and authority of the Church with a similar image and outcry: “Aha! The human race, even after centuries, will not be cured of its clubbing at the hands of those monsters.” However, Mendelssohn gave precedence to reason, and he was wary of the stirrings of romanticism. In his latter years, Mendelssohn was apprehensive about the failure of the Enlightenment. “We dreamed of nothing except Enlightenment, and we believed that the light of reason would shine on the surroundings with such power that illusions and burning fanaticism could no longer be seen.” In a personal letter to a contemporary, he confided: “But, as we see, on the other side of the horizon night is falling again, with all its ghosts.”3 The pessimistic outlook of Los Caprichos reverberates even more strongly at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Goya’s pictures of the horrors of war. Horrified by the French occupation, Goya took his deep shock at human evil, embodied in Napoleon’s military power, to new heights, especially in his painting The Third of May 1808, depicting the execution of four hundred Spaniards in Madrid. The dreadful sights of political events were confirmed in the mirror that Goya held up to the Europeans. Napoleon, the famous general, was only thirty years old when he took up the reins of power as the sole ruler. During the last years of the eighteenth century, Europe observed with bated breath—with enthusiasm or dread—the ambitious young man who stood out in battles in Italy and redrew the political boundaries of the continent. Events in the arena of the war were almost inconceivable, following one upon the other like aftershocks produced by the huge earthquake of 1789. The French army entered Rome, removed Pius VI from his throne (February 10, 1798), and established the Roman Republic. A short time afterward, the French also invaded Switzerland and proclaimed the Helvetic Republic as a French protectorate (April 12, 1798). Irish republicans rebelled against England in hopes of French support (May 23, 1798). A fleet bearing thirty-seven thousand soldiers commanded by Napoleon set sail from Toulon and landed in Egypt, aiming to disrupt the British trade routes. Cairo was conquered in the Battle of the Pyramids, where the Ottoman army was defeated (July 21, 1798), but a few days later (August 1), British battleships under the command of the illustrious Admiral Nelson (1758–1805) destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir Bay.

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The following year was no less tumultuous. Russia and Turkey conquered Corfu from the French garrison (March 3, 1799). Napoleon and his troops conquered Jaffa on March 7 and slaughtered about two thousand Albanian soldiers. The siege of Acre failed, and Napoleon withdrew to Egypt (May 21). During the summer, he managed to evade the British warships and returned to France. Edmund Burke’s prediction that the revolution would ultimately deteriorate into a kind of military dictatorship came true. In the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9), the Directoire was removed, and Napoleon was appointed First Consul (August 2, 1800). He launched another military campaign in the spring, crossed the Alps at the head of forty thousand troops (May 15), and overcame the Austrian army in the battle of Marengo (June 14). Seven months later, the Treaty of Lunéville was signed, beginning the dismantling of the Holy Roman Empire.4 Trebitsch informed his Hebrew readers about this round of warfare in his chronicle, Qorot ha’itim. He wrote about the overthrow of Pius VI and his banishment with schadenfreude: “They clipped the Pope’s state and removed his scepter, they plundered his treasures and the vessels of his treasure house, things that stood at world’s apex, they hold in contempt, and the Pope was driven out from attachment to his estate, removed from there against his will, and not to his benefit, and he went away to the land of Tuscany, which was close to his state.” In his description of the destruction of the French fleet off the Egyptian coast, he described public opinion, which followed Napoleon’s fate with tense curiosity: “Behold, Bonaparte and his camp remain in the land of Egypt like a fish without fins and a bird without wings, cut off from their country . . . and if he returns, he will be required to relate the story of the Exodus.” Failure of the siege of Acre inspired hope in his enemies’ hearts that his end was near (“When he arrived at the seacoast of the fortified city of Acre, there his camp thundered eleven times to conquer it with a high hand, and nothing availed them, and there he was struck a hard blow by the Ishmaelites who brought him down there”), but 1799 ended with his absolute takeover of France: “They did away with many ministers of the Convention and formed a three-member Consulate, with Bonaparte as the principal one, above them, and he orders and commands.”5 But Trebitsch was unaware of the dark days that befell the Jewish communities of Central Italy when the Austro-Russian army won a series of victories over the French, and the Cisalpine Republic collapsed. The Jews were accused of collaboration with the French invader and of sympathy for the revolution, becoming the target of a wave of severe violence at the hands of the patriotic Italian mob. Rabbi Mattatya Nissim Terni (1745–1815), from Urbino, was

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arrested on April 10, under suspicion of Jacobin political activity. In Monte San Savino, a town that Azulai had visited in midcentury and from which he fled in disappointment, because he had not received hospitality, the synagogue was attacked, and Jewish houses were pillaged (June 12–13). About a week later, the authorities issued a decree expelling the members of the community. In Pitigliano, a mob broke into the ghetto on June 16 and smashed Abraham Camerino’s head with an axe. In Senigallia, the property of the Jews in the ghetto was plundered on June 18, thirteen Jews were murdered, and many were injured. The remainder fled to Ancona in the middle of the night. In Sienna, on June 28, the reactionary Viva Maria gang attacked the ghetto and murdered thirteen Jews. The Torah scrolls were removed from the Holy Ark and desecrated. Abraham Senigallia, from Fossano, a supporter of the revolution, was saved at the last minute from a rioting mob that wanted to burn him alive. For the Jews of Italy, who were caught up in these riots, that spring was entirely given over to the “monsters.”6 Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters appears to be a good expression of the tension between the Enlightenment and romanticism and also between hopes and fears, humanism and cruelty. After two or three decades of reform and a decade of revolution, dramatic consequences were evident. As William Doyle put it, in 1800, Europe was riven as never before, because in reaction to the revolution the ideology of conservatism arose, according to which any change at all was regarded as equally dangerous.7 The London Annual Register certainly expressed the feeling of its readers in saying that in 1799, “the world was suddenly turned upside down.” The powerful picture of dramatic change only grew stronger. At the end of 1800, that magazine wrote that the eighteenth century was over and identified several basic trends that enabled one to understand the entire period, so that the leading events could be arranged into a picture that could be taken in one glance. In the opinion of the Annual Register: “On a general recollection or review of the state of society, or human nature, in the eighteenth century, the ideas that recur the oftenest, and remain uppermost on the mind, are the three following: the intercourses of men were more extensive than at any former period with which we are acquainted; the progression of knowledge was more rapid; and the discoveries of philosophy were applied more than they ever had been before to practical purposes.” The monarchical political establishments were deeply worried. Even in Britain, meetings of more than fifty people required special authorization. It was still too early to evaluate the consequences of the great blow to the feudal order, and one looked forward with hope mingled with fear. This respectable London

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periodical had its own monsters. The great paradox was that, toward the end of the most enlightened century, more soldiers than ever were deployed on the continent. Napoleon represented the gigantic, raging war, for which multitudes had been conscripted. The editors of the periodical at least expressed hope for fulfillment of the humanitarian vision: “May all civilized nations consociate and co-operate for the general good; for lessening calamities, increasing comforts, and advancing human nature to great and great excellence, both intellectual and moral!” From years of suffering and the horrors of war, they wrote, may the human race move toward progress and improvement in an era of peace. The authors expressed hope that “the energy of our ingenious and lively neighbours will return to the arts and sciences with an elastic force, proportioned to the misguided ardour that has too long propelled them to the ensanguined field of battle.”8 Since the turn of the century took place in the midst of the war of the second coalition against France (1799–1802), feelings were mixed. The eighteenth century was judged on the basis of its achievements in science and culture (the Enlightenment), but no less in consideration of the suffering and destruction caused by wars. Yearning for peace throbbed in many of the poems and greetings that appeared in the press, and the ceasefire declared on December 25, nearly at the end of the century, offered hope for escape from a blood-soaked century. People in Germany fostered a vision of the future and dreamed of a new world of happiness and a golden age. They related to the coming nineteenth century as a pure, blank page. One of the poems called out fervently: “Oh, century! Come, begin, yes, begin your course!” An advertisement appeared in a newspaper in Breslau, offering special medallions as gifts for friends on the occasion of the change in centuries, and pendants for women were fashioned with the figure of the double-faced god, Janus. The historical event was celebrated in many mass events, with prayers of thanksgiving in churches, the ringing of bells, parades in the cities, popular beer festivals, and music and dancing.9 In Prussia, under the rule of the new king, Friedrich Wilhelm III (1770– 1840), the celebrations combined joy for the start of a new century with the hundredth anniversary of the kingdom (Friedrich I was crowned in January 1701) in a patriotic festival, intensified by the atmosphere of war. The National Newspaper of the Germans (National-Zeitung der Teutschen), which was published in Gotha, reported with excitement that “not even the Jews were left behind,” publicly remarking on their happiness. On Sunday afternoon, January 18, 1801, in the synagogue of the Glogau community, Jews and gentiles gathered for a loyalty celebration. The event was directed by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Bushka (1739–1807), who was born in Zamosc, Galicia, and who served as the rabbi of

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Glogau before he continued his career by succeeding his father-in-law, Rabbi Raphael Cohen, in Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek. Though the philosopher Solomon Maimon had recently (November 22, 1800) been buried unceremoniously in the Glogau cemetery, the Jewish community also invited non-Jews to the thanksgiving ceremony. The newspaper reported that the impressive ceremony had included a prayer for the royal house, a sermon, and a concert. Accompanied by an orchestra and chorus, the cantor sang Psalms 7. To the sound of trumpets, drums, a harp, and strings, the audience cheered for the monarch: “Long live Friedrich Wilhelm III!”10 Not everyone joined the festive celebrations. For example, the English opponent of the revolution, John Bowles (1751–1819), a conservative follower of Burke, demanded that Europe make a comprehensive spiritual accounting. The dramatic and unprecedented challenge to stability at the end of the eighteenth century seemed to be a dreadful crisis to him, and he placed the blame on the barbaric French attack against the crown and God: “As the near approach of a new century has so powerful a tendency to excite the mind to reflection it ought to be a season of great Religious and moral improvement.” He went on to say that it would be disastrous if such a time were to pass without giving heed to its significance. There have been tumultuous periods in history, but none was equal to the present era of revolutions, during which the “moderns” gave birth to “the monster of anarchy.” To their misfortune, half of Europe was already subject to the worst and most evil heretics in the world, and the political situation was so new that one could not even profit from the experience of former times to discover its meaning.11 Ultimately, despite this uncertainty, the general awareness of the great change was accompanied by joy for the victory of humanity. It appeared that despite everything, many of the monsters had been expelled and had disappeared. The Physician and historian David Ramsay (1749–1815) summed up the achievements of science in a speech before the Society of Physicians of South Carolina, which he gave on the first day of the new century. He was excited, he said, because people of his generation could stand at such a crossroads, between the passing century and the new one, only once in their lives. A new light had shone on them, so that “a volume would hardly be sufficient to detail the improvements that have taken place in the theory and practice of physic within the last hundred years.” In our time the life of the human race is healthier and more secure, he stated. Ramsay told his listeners, “It is no exaggeration to assert that the medical facts and observations, which have been published in the eighteenth century, have done more towards explaining the functions, and curing the diseases of the human body, than all that remained on record for

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many, perhaps for all the centuries that had preceded since the creation.” Many people’s lives were saved. We have learned how to resuscitate people who have drowned, to teach sign language to the deaf, and to instruct people in healthful diet, hygiene, and preventative medicine. We have reduced the danger of epidemics, he continued, developed an inoculation against smallpox, invented by the English physician Edward Jenner (1742–1823), which prevents death, and we hardly ever seen children with smallpox scars anymore. The lives of pregnant women and women giving birth were less endangered than in the past, he said, adding, “I appeal to those, who can look back on thirty, forty, or fifty years, whether a great reformation, in these particulars, has not taken place” regarding women’s safety and the decrease in infant mortality. “We have reason to congratulate ourselves, that we were born in this enlightened period. The age of investigations, of philosophy, and of medicine. While we bid adieu to the eighteenth century, we cannot but recollect its many triumphs.”12 The sense of accomplishment versus the monsters also throbbed among the Jews of Europe at the end of the century.13 On the one hand, we can listen to the enthusiastic voice of Dov Ber Birkenthal, who, from his viewpoint at the end of the century, saw a dramatic change for the better in the relation of the rulers of Europe to the Jews. His work on the history of Sabbateanism and Frankism, written in 1800, resounds with the spirit of optimism. He emphasized that there were no more blood libels in Poland. Rationalism had increased, scholars denying miracles had refuted the false beliefs of Christianity, the Enlightenment had criticized religion, and belief in ghosts and evil spirits had declined.14 On the other hand, the Jewish modernizers in Berlin were trapped in difficult uncertainty. The central organ of the Haskalah movement, Hameasef, had been closed. The young Maskil Shalom Hacohen (1773–1845)—born in the Polish districts that had been ceded to Russia, and a teacher in the school in Berlin—proposed reviving the journal, but former editor Isaac Euchel responded that the Haskalah movement had collapsed. No one was interested anymore in the project of reestablishing Hebrew culture. “The days of love have passed, the days of the covenant between me and the children of Israel have passed; once the harbingers of wisdom had been seen, and the Hebrew tongue flourished in fame and splendor,” but no more. Euchel mourned his personal failure. In his opinion, the success of acculturation explained the abandonment of Hebrew: “From the day they said in their hearts, ‘the land is full of knowledge,’ they were tired of the language of their ancestors and threw it behind their backs, and they also forgot me, and they abandoned me ‘like the heath in the desert’ [Jer. 17:6] . . . wandering, turning about in the streets, open your eyes and see whether you find a single person in the city or two in a family, who will be willing to listen to you, if they feel that the Hebrew

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language is on your tongue.” Less than two decades had passed since the project of Haskalah had been launched, and now a dramatic change had taken place, leaving the Maskilim behind: “Thus the times and posterity have changed, thus people have changed their opinions!”15 Euchel was not referring to defeat of the Maskilim at the hands of those loyal to the tradition, but rather about the transformation that had taken place within the wealthy, fashionable elite of Berlin, with their European education. They rejected Haskalah and opted for cultural and social integration, deeper than ever, in the majority society of Germany. In 1799, David Friedländer, formerly one of the sponsors, patrons, and promoters of Haskalah, could confirm Euchel’s gloomy prediction. In his picture of the future, which was at the same time what he wished for, three routes could be seen: the political liberation of the Jews, the dismantling of the remnants of communal self-rule, and the deepening of secularization. Friedländer declared: “In my opinion, within ten years a revolution must take place in the attitude toward religion among the Jews.” As a result, the rabbis, who still lived in the twelfth century and refused to recognize the changes and innovations, would be, “thank God, without authority and power.” In the age following “the new political revolutions,” no religion would be immune. The “philosophical religion” would be victorious. Yeshivas, the study of Talmud, and life according to Halakha would disappear from Jewish society. That which would occur within ten years in Berlin, the pioneer of modernization, would be repeated in fifteen years in the communities of Silesia, and afterward in Holland, too. In an anonymous open letter that Friedländer sent in that year to the Protestant clergyman, Teller, he shared the “monsters” that disturbed his rest with him. Writing in the name of the fellow members of the affluent and cultivated bourgeois class, he said, “the religion in which we were educated was full of mystical elements. The history of olden times was mysterious, dark, and unconnected to perfection.” It was absolutely contradictory to life in the surrounding world, making people feel alien and foreign. Religious leaders were “frightening and in part repulsive,” and they could not pass the test of reason. The insult that tormented young Jews was too hard to bear, because “nothing is more humiliating to a reasonable person than this situation of perpetual immaturity.” At the end of the century, “the study of Hebrew and the Talmud decreases from day to day. Respect for rabbis gradually diminishes, and, with neglect of the commandments of rituals and ceremonies, it will diminish further.” No less important, “the government has correctly denied the rabbis in every country the right to pass judgment and the right to impose Halakha.” In such circumstances, they could no longer bear contempt toward themselves. Out of distress and frustration, since the effort to gain the hoped-for emancipation of the Jews of Prussia

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had failed, Friedländer desperately sought an emergency solution. Conversion was not to be considered, because “our conscience stops us.” Becoming Christian was dishonorable, inconsistent with philosophical religion, and harmful to the family. To circumvent emancipation, which did not appear to be on the horizon, as well as conversion, Friedländer asked Teller to allow him and families of his class “to choose the great Protestant Christian community as a place of refuge.” Friedländer was probably not surprised that his appeal was rejected or by the voices of criticism from his Jewish brethren, who regarded this public appeal as the betrayal of a senior intellectual of his people. This was a moment of deep crisis, underlying which was disappointment that the age of revolution had failed to influence the fate of the Jews of Prussia. This disappointment was accompanied by the feeling of stinging indignity about the gap between identification with Germany and the policy of exclusion from the state.16 The monstrous nightmares of those in fear of the changes of the revolutionary age were in fact born when reason woke up and destroyed the old order. At the end of the eighteenth century, a man who represented this position in the strongest possible way was Raphael Cohen, whom we have already met as the sworn enemy of the modernizers. In 1799, at the age of seventy-seven, after a long, rich career in the rabbinate of various communities in Poland and northern Germany (twenty-three years in Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek), he announced his retirement. In the last two sermons that he gave in the synagogue, on the New Moon of Adar and on the Sabbath before Passover in 1799 , he left his post with a final effort to halt the crisis in religion. Those responsible for that crisis were the ones he saw as monsters, those “evildoers” who no longer feared to violate religious discipline and held scholars and rabbis in contempt. “These people are like beasts of prey.” While Friedländer viewed cancellation of rabbinical authority as a sign of the new, liberating era, Cohen, with the opposite outlook, identified this as the heart of the crisis. For him, the revocation of Jewish autonomy signified a historical change that one could only lament: You must know and turn your eyes toward all the countries where the Jews are dispersed, instead of what they had in the first times, law and judgment, a staff and a strap to remove the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor, and destruction from the talons of injustice, in all the lands where they dwelled, and even in those dark and gloomy days. . . . Now, woe to the generation to which this happened in its time, no vestige remains of the honest laws of the Lord, our enemies are criminal, and the honor of Jacob is lessened among the nations, and his laws are no longer recognized.

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If, nevertheless, there still remained a scrap of self-rule, the critics had come from within: “They despise judgment and weed out everything honest, taking the scepter of rule from the judges of Israel.” Shocked and in pain, Cohen cried out in his sermon: “How can they not be ashamed and mortified, how can they not have deathly fear to grasp the seat of the very awesome Lord. . . . Alas! How did the hand of the informers increase in strength, how did informing increase, until it touched the head. . . . Let them be ashamed and abashed!” In his view, the critical process, because of which “all the meager and feeble rule was taken from Israel,” painted the tragic end of the century in somber hues. The eighteenth century ended for him at the same time as his retirement from the rabbinate in a gloomy climate: “How many bad things were innovated in these years because of the speech of people gripped in the snares of the Evil Impulse?” Cohen warned scholars to study the Torah for its own sake, not to dare criticize their rabbis, and to accept their authority. In his community, under the king of Denmark, there was still a chance to retain the old order. He concluded his second sermon by calling on his listeners not to cede the authority of the autonomous community: “Strengthen, please, the column of judgment, which, by the grace of God, inclined the heart of our lord, his highness, the righteous king, to us, to give us this good remnant in his land, to judge between a man and his fellow, as according to the laws and judgments of the Torah, which our Lord, God commanded us. Have mercy for this remnant, which is left to us in this country.” He believed that clinging to the old order is what protected them in the communities of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek against the injuries of the storms of revolution. The letter of congratulation and esteem that he received from King Christian VII on his retirement certainly strengthened his confidence that it was still possible to reverse the helm of history. However, this was not sufficient to assuage his fears of the loss of control or to exorcise the demons that vexed his soul. Jacob Katz summed up the rabbi’s bitter feelings succinctly, saying that in Raphael Cohen’s last sermons, the tone of despair increased, and it was the despair of a man whose world was being destroyed before his eyes.17 Rabbi Elazar Fleckeles of Prague’s demons were a handful of Frankist families in his city. Unlike Cohen, he wasn’t in despair but was extremely angry and was determined to exterminate the threat, which was so contemptible and dangerous. The Wehle, Porges, and Bondy families—and especially Jonas Wehle, the senior Frankist, and his son-in-law, Leib Enoch von Hönigsberg (1771–1811), the grandson of Israel Hönig, who was granted a noble title under Joseph II—belonged to the cultivated and affluent elite of the community, and unlike the Christian branch of the Frankists, they remained Jewish. While they were Sabbatean “believers” who studied Kabbalah and were closely connected

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with the Court of Frank’s children in Offenbach, they also regarded themselves as representatives of the party of Enlightenment; they were contemptuous of religious leaders and believed in progress. Fleckeles’s hostility toward them increased after he was imprisoned for several days (November 11, 1800) when they complained to the police that he was persecuting them. He reported: “I was arrested because of words of Torah, because of the cursed sect of impure souls, lepers with gonorrhea, believers in the defeated carcass, Shabbetai Zevi, the chief dog of the dogs.” Between the autumn of 1798 and the winter of 1800, Fleckeles gave three angry sermons in the three synagogues of Prague. He attacked Sabbateanism as a “new religion” that had no connection with Judaism, and he warned against the twin aspects of the crisis of religion: “There are two kinds of criminals, panicked and insane . . . one type is the essence of evil, than which there is nothing more evil, and the second type is more evil than the first.” Rationalistic heresy was threatening (“The heretics and skeptics who deny the creation of the world ex nihilo and the existence of the blessed Lord”), but the Sabbatean heresy was even graver. Their pretense of being “fearful for the world of the Lord” was a deception. The men and women of the Frankist families were wild libertines who sinned with sexual permissiveness, without restraint or shame; they did not observe the Halakha, and they defied tradition by canceling the fasts, by permitting what was forbidden, and by spreading the idea of absolute freedom: “The voice of the dove is heard, a time for all desire, and people will do what they please.” This feeling of liberation threatened the conservative elite. In Fleckeles’ view, this was a display of evil unlike any since the creation of the world. An anonymous complaint accused them of revolutionary Jacobinism, not loyal to the state, and admiration for Napoleon. The Frankists themselves presented the struggle against them as the culture war of the conservative orthodox Jews, who wanted to thwart all change, against enlightened Jews, who were persecuted though they had done nothing wrong. Some of them, especially Hönigsberg, were admirers of Kant and Mendelssohn, and they had come to have faith because of the rationalistic philosophy of the Haskalah. Pawel Maciejko calls this “Frankism for Literati.” The timing of Fleckeles’ attack was not coincidental. The year 1799\1800 had been marked as a messianic year, and, as he said, “they went mad on this year” and “sent strange and rebellious epistles to all the towns with foolish and ignorant words.”18 The letters, which were written in red ink, marked almost the final effort to win hearts for the Sabbatean faith. Moses Porges, his brother, and Jonah Haufsinger, testified to the rabbinical court of Fürth on November 24, 1800,

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that they helped write the epistles under orders from Frank’s children. A century after Judah H.asid and his group moved to Jerusalem to greet the messiah, dozens of letters were sent to the communities of Poland, the Ukraine, Bohemia, Moravia, and Germany, under the impression of the upheavals of revolution and wars (with a quotation from the Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a, “the kingdom will be converted to heresy”), warning against imminent disasters and recommending conversion. This was a critical year, to which Jacob Frank had referred nearly thirty years earlier, in his prophecy of the end of days: “The time will come when all the Jews will be forced into apostasy.” Now the time had come: “Now beloved, the whole House of Israel, behold we are informing you of what the Lord has favored us with, that this year, 5560, will be a time of trouble for the Jews, when all the pangs [of the messiah] will take place, as [Frank] wrote in his holy letter . . . and it is incumbent upon us to announce to you with a final warning to perform and maintain what was written in his holy letter.” The letters were signed by three Frankists from the Shorr and Litmann families, who had converted to Christianity. They called upon the Jews to join Frank’s followers, “for he certainly has not died, and he led us on the path of truth, in the holy religion of Edom, for he who is of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob most walk in their way.”19 But the letters failed to enlist new supporters, and the struggle against the Frankists grew fiercer. In the autumn of 1800, a proclamation of excommunication was nailed to the doors of the synagogues in Prague. Signed by rabbis Fleckeles, Samuel Landau, and Michael Bachrach, it quoted the excommunications of the beginning of the century and emphasized that the danger of Sabbateanism had been rediscovered like a plague. Sabbateans who were identified on the streets of Prague were cursed and spat upon. The city police force had to intervene to restore order. Violence erupted in the women’s section of the Altneuschul synagogue on the eve of Shemini ‘Atseret (October 10, 1800), and Judith Fränkel, the daughter of Eva and Jonas Wehle and the sister-in-law of Hönigsberg, was attacked because it was claimed she had “poisoned” her husband with provocation to Sabbateanism.20 A pessimistic farewell to the eighteenth century, under the distressing impression of the Frankist episode, was presented in an allegorical satire that was written in Hebrew, apparently by Baruch Jeitteles (1762–1813), a prominent member of the Haskalah circle in Prague, and was published in the autumn of 1800. At the start of the dialogue between 5560, the passing year, and 5561, the coming year, 5560 tries to conceal the crisis that took place in its time. The Enlightenment, whose purpose is to supply a critical criterion for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between good and evil, has indeed spread,

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but there is cause for concern regarding its future, because it is understood in a distorted and superficial way. The year 5561 recalls that the passing year was the one the Frankists spoke of in the Red Letters. The year 5560 confesses with shame (“how in history books my name will be remembered with shame and great contempt”). Before responding to the request of the new year, it begins to bring it up to date about the history of Sabbateanism and its strengthening in Prague. This expressed the frustration of the Maskilim, because the Frankists actually emerged from circles close to them. Jeitteles also rejected the empowerment of women: “Another great, sick evil about that sect, is that they have women who prophesy and proclaim the advent of the messianic age according to their dreams and the visions they saw.” However, Hönigsberg was at the center of the criticism, because his clinging to the sect seemed so contrary to the expected direction of history. He was represented as a hybrid figure who “combined many of the opinions of ancient and recent philosophy together with words of the Kabbalah, taking from the teachings of Kant, the inquirer, and dressing them in the garb of the Zohar and the Kabbalah of the ARI.” Great was his astonishment: “Could it be that a man who was touched by the light of wisdom only for moments, a man whose hands grasped but little of the knowledge of exalted things, could be followed to this act of madness?” The men and women who joined “the crazy sect,” which spoiled the image of the age of reason, were the monsters of Jewish Prague. The dialogue ends with the common prayer of 5560 and 5561 in a plea to God: “Open the eyes of the seduced and let them see that they have been led with cunning like sheep to the slaughter.” Make them repent, so they may see the light, and the conflict will end. “When they finished praying, the years kissed each other, and they both went on their way.” The year 5561 (1800/1801) began with the hope that hearts would open to moderate Haskalah, which combined inquiry with faith, the middle way between ignorance and heresy.21

“I A m a Je w, I A m a R epu blica n, a n d I A m Poor”: Th e E x per i ence of Li bert y a n d Politica l I dentit y In the last three years of the century, the aftershocks of the revolution and the great confrontation between Napoleonic France and its rivals continued to agitate the Jews as well. Political awareness grew sharper, and a republican or conservative political stance became an important component of Jewish identity. Dramas played out quickly and caused reversals, contributing to the feeling of instability. For example, Rome passed from hand to hand, and the

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tension never ceased in Italy between the republican supporters of France and the supporters of the old order and the pope, which depended on the bayonets of the Italian army from Naples and the Austrian army. In early 1798, the Jews of Rome celebrated their liberation and tore the humiliating yellow badge from their hats, which identified them as Jews. They celebrated the exile of Pius VI, who had been the architect of the draconian, restrictive edict of 1775, by planting trees of liberty in the ghetto, whose gates had been opened. A directive issued on July 9, 1798, expressed Jewish emancipation in a nutshell: “Jews who fulfill the conditions necessary for becoming citizens of Rome, will be subject only to the laws that apply to all citizens of Rome.” In November of that year, the French were expelled, and the supporters of the revolution were persecuted. Then, in early 1799, the French army retook the city, only to be forced to withdraw in the fall. Pope Pius VII ruled the city, starting in 1800, and the restrictive system was reinstated for a while.22 Issachar H.aim Carpi, a native of Revere in Lombardy and a resident of Mantua, paid a heavy price for his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution. He and his son were arrested as political criminals along with dozens of others in March 1799, when the Austrians gained the upper hand. Only two years later, after the peace treaty was signed in early 1801, could he return home as a free man. His personal account describing his two years of political exile was also a radical political manifesto. The calamity began when the Austrian army conquered Mantua in 1799. For someone like him, who had experienced emancipation at the hands of the French, this was a disaster. In the language of mourning for the destruction of the Temple, he lamented the reaction: “They turn the bowl upside down . . . we are comparable to slaves.” Revolutionary loyalists like him were persecuted. Carpi did not manage to run away and hide. He was thrown into detention, and when Napoleon’s army approached, it was decided to send him and the other political prisoners into exile. He saw Napoleon as a figure of redemption: “In the darkness, a light shone for the righteous, the sun emerged from its chamber, and its light appeared on our land, on the day the savior entered our boundaries, all the sons of Jacob [the Jacobins] rejoiced together, for is not the son of Porat [Bonaparte] the servant of God, the Lord of all the earth?” After undergoing suffering as a prisoner and being transported to the Balkans by sea and land, via Venice and Trieste, he was released upon Napoleon’s victory. Carpi, the Jacobin, was overjoyed, sparing no words or images to praise his venerated hero: “With Napoleon’s success, goodness came to us, is it not that a wise and intelligent man succeeded against his enemies?. . . . From a distance he saw the distress of his sons and pitied us. . . . He cried out liberty for us and overcame his enemies . . . like the light of the sun, making grass and plants grow, thus did Napoleon make our bones flourish.”23

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As we have seen, the emancipation in Holland led to a split in the Ashkenazi community. The new democratic congregation, Adat Yeshurun, protested more strongly against the old congregation. They claimed that the corrupt lay leaders blinded people’s eyes in their denial of the principles of the revolution and the rights of man and the citizen and failed to see the benefit for the Jews brought by French liberal values. The culture war in Jewish Amsterdam was waged in polemical writing in Dutch-Yiddish. Pamphlets contained ordinary conversations among members of the community and also exchanged imprecations and slander: “There can be no peace for the wicked ones who severed themselves together from our congregation,” the “old ones” remonstrated from one side. Their rivals displayed sympathy for France in a song of protest to the melody of “La Marseillaise,” and in another poem, they proclaimed victory: “Come, now, all you householders, and see the great celebration! No one can interfere with you, wear white, red, and blue all of you! . . . For whom is the sounding of victory? For the synagogue of the new congregation. . . . We are all free, and they [the lay leaders of the old congregation] will be removed from the community office, O Brother! Hear O Israel.” At that time, in early 1798, the representatives of the new congregation did succeed in gaining control of the communal government. With great excitement, the twenty-third number of the leaflet called out: “Brethren! Brethren! We have been oppressed for too long in the eyes of the nations of the world! They have subjected us to humiliation and shame! They treated us like slaves . . . and we were unable to demand for ourselves at least civil rights! Freedom has been given not only to the Jews in this country, but to our brethren, the entire House of Israel, who dwell in every land, and this was done by the mighty nation of the French, who gave us liberty.” However, the exhilaration of liberation was short-lived, because, as in Rome and Mantua, in Holland, too, the balance of power changed over and over again because of reversals on the ground. After an upheaval that shifted political power from the radicals to the conservatives, the new congregation was forced to join with the old one, with joint leadership. But, toward the end of the first century of the modern age, consciousness of the dramatic historical change that the French had made and powerful feelings of elation in the age of liberty were highly significant.24 In the Russian empire as well, Katherine’s successors continued to be perturbed by the Jewish question. A famine in White Russia caused the central government in Saint Petersburg to investigate to find out who was to blame for the lamentable situation of the masses of peasants. During Czar Pawel I short reign (1796–1801), before his assassination, two main opinions were submitted to the Senate as the basis for determining policy. The governor of Lithuania,

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Ivan Grigorievich Frizel (1760–1810), and the senator and poet Gavril Derzhavin (1743–1816) singled out the Jews as responsible for the crisis. Their recommendations combined prejudice and hostility with concepts and corrective measures inspired by the reform policy of enlightened absolutism. Frizel, a moderate, shared the idea of happiness for all of humanity with the Enlightenment. He proposed “new and more certain methods for correcting the peasants’ plight and appointing experienced men to reform the situation of the Jewish nation, by means of enlightened and well-educated Jews, who would be capable of purifying their religion of fanaticism and prejudice, which are so damaging to their happiness.” Derzhavin returned from a trip to White Russia, and in 1800, he submitted a detailed proposal for reform that included eighty-eight articles (imposing censorship on books, directing pupils to the regular schools, training in productive professions, and encouraging agricultural settlement, the obligation to take family names, abolition of the communities, solely religious leadership headed by a chief rabbi, and more). “These parasites lived in ease thanks to their deceitful deeds and lies, at the expense of Polish citizens’ hospitality,” Derzhavin wrote in his report, treading a fine line between segregation and integration. He directed quite a few insults against the Jews, “this stiff-necked and fanatical people, enemies of Christians,” while he also believed in the obligation to impose “order and reform” on their situation.25 One of the documents that Derzhavin used was the memorandum addressed to the Russian government by Neta H.aimovitch Notkin of Shklow, a prominent representative of the Jewish commercial elite in the Mogilew district. Under the reign of Stanisław Poniatowki, he was appointed “advisor to the royal court,” and after the Partition, he approached high Russian officialdom and became the first Jew to live openly in Saint Petersburg. Notkin’s memorandum pointed to the plight of the Jews and laid out a detailed plan for establishing agricultural settlements, which would improve their lot and contribute to the economic development of Russia. Jacob Eliahu Frank, a physician from White Russia, believed that enlightened Jews now had the opportunity to put an end to the rule of the rabbis and to dismantle what remained of community autonomy. This subversive voice, as we have seen, had echoed many times in earlier decades, but this time it seemed that it would find support in the Russian government. In a memorandum dated September 6, 1800, which Frank sent to Derzhavin when he reached the area where he lived, he put together a vision and revolutionary program influenced by Dohm, Joseph II, and Friedländer. Political reform was his primary concern. How could a Jew also become “a good and useful citizen”? In his opinion, effort should be focused on breaking down the walls that separated the Jews from other people by means of a deep religious reform, which

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would root out superstition, illusion, and empty ritual ceremonies and do away with the authority of the Talmud. As a devotee of radical enlightenment, he pointed out the stark crisis, for which “visionaries” and cheats were responsible, which “distorted the true level of the principles of the Jewish religion and its laws by false interpretations and mystical Talmudic explanations.” Now the Jewish people were being led, “stricken with blindness on the dark path of sanctifying vain beliefs.” Overcoming “the nonsense of the Talmud” was the way to “moral revival.” In parallel, the state must make opportunities available to the Jews for advanced education and access to government positions, so that the members of the following generation could already be citizens. The plans of the governmental leaders, from the outside, and of Frank, from inside, supported breaking up the basis of Jewish life according to the old order. Frank’s fundamental assumption was that the rabbis and their distorted leadership “had brought about the separation of the Jews from other nations, imbued them with deep hatred of any other religion, and, thanks to the concepts of a false religion, they erected a wall separating the Jews from the rest of humanity.” This harsh critique inspired him with a vision for reform.26 The Jewish citizens of the United States faced entirely different challenges. Gershom Seixas who gave the first Jewish Thanksgiving sermon in New York, again thanked God for settling the Jews in a land where they had the same advantages as the other citizens. From their strong position, with the self-assurance of equality, the Jews of the young country in North America also took part in the vigorous political dispute between the Federalists, who wanted to go to war against Napoleonic France and sign a treaty with England, and the Jeffersonian Republicans, who continued to see France as the land of democratic revolution and opposed the war. When President John Adams (1735–1826) decreed a national day of fasting and prayer (May 9, 1798) because of the worrisome confrontation with France, which hampered maritime trade, Seixas gave another sermon in the Sephardic Shearith Israel synagogue in New York. In his view, the international crisis was a sign of imminent redemption, and he called for universal, humanistic brotherly love that transcended borders and nationalities. Regarding the current political issue, Seixas expressed clear support for the Republicans, who sought peace. The political paradox was clear to him. The threat of war came from the great conquering nation that had recently helped the colonies achieve independence and free themselves from British oppression.27 Ultimately Adams came to an agreement with France, and war was averted, but the dispute did not disappear. Among the Jewish Jeffersonians, criticism was leveled against the supporters of the established class, which feared

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equality. A particularly interesting voice was then heard defending the Republican political position out of loyalty to Judaism. A slanderous article was published in a Federalist newspaper that discussed a meeting of the Republican association in Philadelphia and mocked the avaricious Republican Jew who took part in it. Within a few days, in another publication, an angry letter to the editor was published on August 13, 1800. Benjamin Nones (1757–1826), a Sephardi Jew born in Bordeaux who immigrated to Philadelphia at the age of twenty and took part in several battles against the British, later becoming one of the heads of the Mikveh Israel congregation, refused to accept the criticism of him. He was involved in politics and was an enthusiastic supporter of Jefferson and a believer in the revolution. He joined the French Association of Friends of Liberty and Equality, and he opposed the Alien and Sedition Law (1798), which restricted freedom of opinion and the possibility that a Frenchman could became an American citizen. He proclaimed his triple identity: “I am a Jew, I am a Republican, and I am Poor.” His religion, he said, was ancient and the foundation of Christianity, and those who believed in it never murdered one another in religious wars, nor did they develop theological hatred. His social status as a man without means was proof of his integrity, though he knew that the aristocracy was proud of its purse and saw poverty as a crime. He defended his identity as a democrat resolutely and ardently, saying that he had sacrificed himself in battles for independence and served his country faithfully and that his Judaism was democratic. The Bible warned against monarchy, and that system of government was a curse, he said. His democratic, antimonarchical, and anticlerical revolutionary principles derived from the Jewish religion. The Church and the monarchies of Europe excluded them, he continued. In monarchical Europe, the Jews were persecuted, tainted as people who did not deserve ordinary, polite treatment, mocked, and cursed. Nones was convinced that the natural allies of the Jews were republics, and it was necessary to turn their backs on the monarchies where they were inhabitants but not citizens. Only in the United States, France, and the Batavian Republic were Jews treated as human beings and brothers, he said. “In republics, we have rights, in monarchies we live but to experience wrongs.” Nones’s conclusion in the summer of 1800 was clear: What could a Jew be except a Republican, especially in America? “Unfeeling & ungrateful would he be, if he were callous to the glorious and benevolent cause of the difference between his situation in this land of freedom, and among the proud and privileged law givers of Europe.” The self-assurance behind this pointed declaration is astonishing. The Jews formed a covenant with the political powers representing freedom. Henceforth monarchies were the enemies of the Jews.28

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“A s Soon a s H e H a d Wa lk ed Fou r Ell s in th e L a n d of Isr a el, H e I m m edi ately Accom plish ed W h at H e Wa nted to Atta in”: Na pol eon a n d R a bbi Nach m a n In the new and turbulent world of the century’s end, expectations soared, opportunities appeared to be limitless, the attainment of happy times seemed closer than ever, and the boundary between the political discourse and the venerable visions of redemption sometimes seemed blurred. Reality itself was depicted as messianic, and in the dense atmosphere of Europe, where the old order was changing, plans were brought forward that had seemed preposterous in the past, but now some believed they could guide military and political action. In this climate, in August 1798, a London newspaper published a “Letter, Recently Written from a Jew to his Brethren, Concerning the Establishment of A New Jewish Republic.” About a hundred years after German newspapers published information about the “holy society” of Judah H.asid, whose messianic goal was to reestablish a Jewish state, a political proclamation called for a Jewish national awakening, to be attained by an alliance with the French republic. The manifesto, which purported to be translated from Italian, began: “Brothers, you who have groaned for so many ages under the weight of the cruelest persecution, do you not wish to burst from the state of degrading humiliation in which intolerant and barbarous religions have placed you?” The time had come for a historical change. “It is at least time to shake off this insufferable yoke—It is time to resume our rank among the other nations of the universe.” We have never forgotten our land, he wrote, and a “propitious” time had come for people to join forces to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Revolutionary France was their model and guiding light. “The invincible nation, which now fills the world with her glory, has shewn [sic] us what the love of country can perform.” We are a nation of six million, he claimed, though in fact there were 2.4 million Jews in the world at that time. We are scatted throughout the world, he said, and we have means. Taking a global view of the Jewish people on three continents, the author proposed establishing a council whose representatives would be chosen by the fifteen Diasporas (which he called “tribes”) from Italy and Holland to Turkey, Egypt, and North Africa. They would meet in Paris, choose a representative to handle negotiations with the ruling Directorate of France, and plan their return to the Land of Israel. In return for its assistance to the Jews, France would receive a monopoly over trade with India. The vision was enthralling: “We shall return to our country—we shall live under our own laws—we shall behold those sacred places which our ancestors illustrated with their courage and their virtues. . . . Israelites! The term of your misfortunes is at hand. The opportunity is favourable—take care you do not allow it to escape.”29

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The letter was published a few months before Napoleon launched his Egyptian campaign and was apparently the first bit of French propaganda aimed at gaining the support of the Jews for his strategic plan to weaken England and distance it from the trade routes to India. In his memoirs, Napoleon himself mentioned the rumor that had spread among the Jews, according to which he would continue on to Jerusalem after conquering Acre, in order to rebuild the Temple of King Solomon. Thomas Corbet (1773–1804), an Irish supporter of the revolution who joined the French army on the Egyptian campaign, wrote a letter to a member of the Directorate in Paris, Paul Barras, developing the vision of a Jewish-French alliance. On February 17, a week after the ten-thousand-man army left Cairo in the direction of the Land of Israel, Corbet connected progress in conquering the Middle East to a general solution of the Jewish question in the world. “Anyone who thinks about the status of the Jews, dispersed in various countries in the world, with no possibility of enjoying full rights in those countries, and even less so to become citizens,” Corbet explained, “will doubtless notice that this proud and honorable nation, which is beaten or persecuted, feels the humiliation of its situation.” The connection of the feeling of humiliation with messianic expectations (they “are waiting breathlessly for the age when they will rise again as a nation”) would assure their support of the French, who would offer cooperation to them, which would culminate in the establishment of their state. He suggested that the member of the Directorate should invite three influential Jews to administer the common project. They would donate money to purchase land in Egypt, assist in constructing war ships, and become promotors of the war and good soldiers. Egypt would be the base for the conquest of the Land of Israel, “the famous land where your hard labor will cease, and your happiness will be complete.” The eighteenth century’s yearning for happiness would be achieved with the fulfillment of the return to the Land of Israel. About a century in advance of the ideas of modern nationalism, Corbet believed that the Jews would bring progress, industrialization, and European enlightenment to backward Asia. They would establish a European bridgehead, “in order to replace the enfeebled and weakened Ottoman Empire in Asia.”30 News circulated in the early spring that Napoleon had published a proclamation in similar spirit. The central newspaper of Paris, Moniteur Universel, announced on May 22, 1799, that he had called upon the Jews to join him in establishing their state, and a Berlin newspaper repeated news that had reached it from Istanbul: “Bonaparte published, it has been said, a declaration to the Jews in many regions of African and Asia, announcing that the kingdom of Jerusalem would be reestablished.” Armed regiments of Jewish soldiers had supposedly

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been organized and were approaching Aleppo, Syria. The reliability of the document, which was only discovered later, was uncertain, especially as it claimed to have been sent from Jerusalem, where Napoleon’s army never reached. However, its contents fit in well with other sources that were circulated in order to strengthen the Jews’ alliance with France as part of the new world order. The document claims to have been written “in the headquarters in Jerusalem, 1 Florial, in the seventh year of the French Republic” (April 20, 1799), by “Bonaparte, the chief officer of the French Republic in Africa and Asia, to the legal heirs of the Land of Israel.” France was the nation “which was now taking vengeance for its shame and the shaming of the most rejected nations, which have long been forgotten under the yoke of slavery, and also the two-thousand-year shame imposed upon you.” The aim was to restore to the Jews their estate, for “the hour has come that perhaps will never return again for thousands of years to demand the restoration of your civil rights among the nations of the whole world, which were taken from you scandalously.” News of Jewish-French cooperation reverberated in the Middle East. From the viewpoint of the Jewish inhabitants of the region, declarations of this kind posed great danger to their lives. Fearing the reactions of the Muslims, in the summer of 1799, a letter of protest was sent from Jerusalem to the Jews of Italy. Seven members of the Sephardi community wrote that they had been living in fear for a year; “from the day that Egypt and its branches were taken, many sorrows have surrounded us, because of the wickedness of the gentiles, the residents of the land, who have accused us of plotting, saying that with the army there are twelve thousand soldiers [of ours] in the vanguard, men of war, and they are men of the covenant, our brethren, the children of Israel.” The rumor that Jewish soldiers had joined the French army stirred up the Muslim population, who were threatening to slaughter them. “Every single day they rise up against us to do away with us and to destroy and kill and despoil all the Jews who dwell in Zion, perish the thought.”31 Nothing came of the fantastic plans for establishing a Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem. Napoleon returned to France with the remnants of the army. However, what this abortive episode left behind was not insignificant. The political vicissitudes of the end of the century also made it possible to dream about dramatic solutions to centuries, even millennia, of distress. In the midst of the astounding changes in Europe, mainly the establishment of new republics, it seemed that the messianic dream of the return of the Jews was not such an imaginary prospect. These declarations, even the ones that were merely part of a propaganda campaign intended to gain Jewish support for France’s intended conquest of the Middle East, gave stronger expression to the tendency that had

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passed through the entire eighteenth century like a scarlet thread, to liberate the Jewish minority as part of the humanistic revolution. In this tumultuous climate, in a world populated by ambitious, visionary men, an unexpected encounter in the Land of Israel was made possible between Napoleon’s military campaign and the spiritual-mystical journey of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who was just three years younger than the great general. When Nachman arrived in Haifa in September of 1798, the governor of Acre, Ahmad al-Jazzar, received instructions from the authorities of the Ottoman Empire to be prepared to meet the danger of French infidels. The twenty-six-year-old zaddik wandered about in the Land of Israel for about half a year in that tempestuous and dangerous time before escaping by the skin of his teeth just a few days before Napoleon’s siege of Acre. How is it that Nachman, who, like many of his predecessors in that century, yearned for powerful religious arousal, and whose eccentric personality interpreted the events around him from a personal point of view, was thrust into the tumultuous center of international relations in the Middle East? Rabbi Nathan Sternhartz, his disciple and the one who recorded the chronicle of his trip, heard from him that he planned to attain spiritual enlightenment in the Land of Israel. He believed that his challenging trip, especially the adventures bound up with the dangerous voyages by sea, would free him from a difficult crisis and bring a remedy for his tormented soul. In the months before the journey, he had experienced difficulty in guiding his Hasidim, and with great fear, he found it difficult to reconcile this problem with his self-image and developed self-awareness. He told his Hasidim: “The whole world needs me, even those zaddikim who are already able to pray, I can show them that they do not know at all what prayer is.” He said of himself, continuing to define his special “self” and his supreme spiritual elevation, that in the world to come, “everyone will need me, and they all will desire to hear the innovations that I innovate constantly and at every moment. What am I? Only what my soul innovates.” In the depths of his unique personality, whose significance was crucial for the entire world, Nachman saw his very existence as a mighty innovation in the world. Arthur Green interpreted this crisis as a struggle with a period of emptiness and distance from God. Nachman was tormented, because he was unable to overcome his earthly appetites, and therefore he saw the trip as an effort to rise above his corporeal self. In Green’s opinion, the best definition of Nachman’s journey to the Holy Land would be as a rite of passage or a journey of initiation—a journey to the navel of the universe, pregnant with danger, in order to obtain the knowledge there to which only he who has been accepted has the right. After returning to the Ukraine, Nachman spoke of his journey as an experience of renewal that prepared him to take on Hasidic leadership.32

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In early May 1798, Nachman set out from his home with his friend and servant, Shimon, abandoning his family with no means of support, without explaining whether he even intended to return. They traveled down the Dnieper to the new Russian port city of Odessa. From there, they sailed on the Black Sea to Istanbul. Shimon was astonished by his rabbi’s acts, which betrayed a worrisome and severe degree of self-abasement. Nachman was negligent in his dress. “He would walk in the market in the way of young men who run about the market and laugh, and he would act out battles in a joking way, like boys. They called one of them France and one of them by another name, and they fought a war, and there were truly kinds of military strategies.” Nachman accorded spiritual significance to these “belittling matters,” calling them “descent” for the purpose of sanctifying the ascent to the Land of Israel. What passed for madness was an intentional disguise, “and he allowed himself to be degraded with all sorts of degradation.” Despite the dangers of sailing on the Mediterranean (“There were great wars in the world then, and the French people were then surrounding the Land of Israel”), he ignored warnings, boarded a ship sailing from Istanbul, and, because “he wanted to abandon himself, he told the man who was with him, ‘Know that I want to endanger myself even with great and enormous dangers.’” After a difficult voyage on a stormy sea, the ship reached the port of Jaffa, but Nachman was suspected of being a French spy. The Ottoman functionaries, “who looked at his clothing and at his facial features, that he had long earlocks as was the custom in our country, and he did not know their language,” denied him entry. At last, on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the two travelers from the Ukraine debarked on the coast of Haifa (September 10, 1798). This was a moment of exaltation. “The enormous greatness of the joy that he had at that moment, when he entered and stood on the holy soil cannot be estimated by the mind. . . . For he immediately achieved what he [wanted to] achieve, for he said that as soon as he had walked four ells in the Land of Israel, he immediately accomplished what he wanted to attain.” At first Nachman wished to return home quickly, as he had no interest in the material country itself, but the journey continued for another few months. He visited Tiberias and Safed and intended to sail back from the port of Acre. Nachman and Shimon arrived in the city precisely at the end of the critical week (March 15–17) when fear of conquest of the city by Napoleon’s army had reached a climax. Acre was then in turmoil. About fifteen thousand Turkish soldiers had barricaded themselves there, and the gates of the city were locked. Nachman and Shimon were unable to board a ship flying the flag of Ragusa, Sicily, which would have given them protection, because it was already overloaded with people seeking refuge. On the Sabbath of March 16, they saw that

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reinforcements had reached Acre—“many ships with soldiers from England.” In the tumult and panic and already under cannon fire, Nachman and Shimon managed to find a place on a ship sailing on Monday morning, March 18, only two days before the beginning of the French siege of Acre. Unfortunately, this was not the end of their perilous voyage. By mistake, they found themselves in a small cabin in the belly of a Turkish warship carrying cannons. The two men panicked after finding themselves in the company of soldiers with whom they couldn’t communicate, and Shimon was even armed with a “loaded fire tube.” The ship was in fact attacked by volleys of cannon fire, “and there on the ship we heard a very loud noise of cannons and of bombs, and other similar noises of war.” The Jewish voyagers were overcome “with great fear, and trembling seized them, so that they could not lie on their beds because of the quaking of their bodies.” The ship managed to escape into the open Mediterranean, and when they arrived at Rhodes, the local Jews paid to ransom them. In the summer of 1799, after many further tribulations at various way stations on the journey home—in Istanbul, Galaţi, and Iași—Nachman returned home at the same time as Napoleon returned to Paris after the failure of the siege of Acre. For the Hasidic zaddik, this was a stage in his spiritual preparation (“for he was privileged with marvelous achievement in the Land of Israel, high and very mighty, infinite and endless”), and Napoleon, despite the failure and the loss of most of his army, which had been sent on the adventure in Egypt and the Land of Israel, gained the opportunity to become the sole ruler of France.33 The leader of the Hasidim in White Russia, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, was far more alert and sensitive to political developments than Nachman and aware of their consequences for the Jews. As noted above, when Russia took over extensive areas of Poland, he saw this as an opportunity for the Hasidic movement to develop. Since then, he had consistently supported the czars, the rulers of the empire, and was apprehensive about Napoleon. Shneur Zalman prayed that heaven would help “our lord the great emperor, Pawel I . . . and may his enemies fear and be abashed.” He was afraid that the revolution would disseminate values that would impair religious belief, and he even predicted the “downfall of the rebels” at the end of the century, not concealing his wish for Napoleon’s failure: “The heads of the rebels of France will succeed at first. But in the end they will be abashed, for the kings of truth will take vengeance, stab them with a sword, and the man Bonaparte will be destroyed. Then the world will rest happily.” In a later statement, Shneur Zalman drew upon the lexicon of revolutionary values, saying that if the Jews supported Russia, after the czar defeated his enemies, “Certainly he will surely remember the Jews, to raise their horn on a firm basis among the masses in all kinds of eternal liberty.” In the

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Kabbalistic-mystical worldview of the Hasidic zaddik, Napoleon represented midat hadin (the divine attribute of strict justice), which would ultimately surrender to midat hah.esed (the divine attribute of mercy), which Russia represented (“for the root of the kingdom of Yavan [literally, Greece, here meaning Greek-Orthodox Russia] is h.esed, and he is the king of the north”). Most ironically, Shneur Zalman, who rejected the “rebels of France” so strongly, was apparently suspected of a connection to revolutionary subversion.34

“R ebelling aga inst R eligion a n d th e Mona rch y ”?: Shneu r Z a l m a n’s I m pr isonm ent Along with the wars of the end of the century, the controversy between Hasidim and Mitnagdim raged again, and in the Vilna community, a political uprising even broke out against this background. On the morning of Purim in 5559 (March 20, 1799), exactly when Nachman and Shimon were caught in the naval war on the Mediterranean, several Hasidic leaders appeared in the Great Synagogue, accompanied by soldiers supplied by the chief of the Vilna police. One of them stood on the reader’s platform and announced that, under orders by the city officials, only Shmuel Ben Eliahu, who belonged to the Hasidim, was permitted to read the Book of Esther. This strange and surprising scene continued when “Meir Ben Raphael came, rose up to the platform and told Yakov [who had been chosen earlier] to leave the platform, and if he didn’t leave, he would give the order to have him taken down ignominiously. Then Yakov got down, and Shmuel Ben Eliahu read. The soldiers did not allow anyone to leave.” This violent nomination of the reader of the Book of Esther was one of the peaks of the rift that tore the community apart. Meir Ben Raphael was one of the wealthy merchants of Vilna and was a central figure in the deep controversy, which combined religious identity and personal issues. During the final months of his life, a directive was issued from the court of the Vilna Gaon not to buy wine from Meir Ben Raphael, and also “the Vilna Gaon did not want them to allow his wife into the ritual bath to immerse herself.” A Hasidic prayer group that met in his home was closed and moved to a secret place. The Committee of Five, which ran the campaign of persecution (for the purpose of “strengthening the religion”), called Meir Ben Raphael before a rabbinical court on March 9, 1798, accusing him of supporting the Hasidim and of disrespect for scholars. One of the community leaders asked, “Why did his soul yearn to cling to the aforementioned sect?” He responded in a way that revealed the character of the dispute in a few words and with sincerity: “Rabbi Meir replied that in our community [the Mitnagdim of Vilna] he did not find truth and there [among

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the Hasidim], he saw truth, and because of that he desired them.” Injured by the persecution, the Hasidic leaders of Vilna appealed to the Russian authorities, complaining about the injustice done to them and about the corruption of the lay leaders. At the end of April, the district authorities did intervene, giving protection to the Hasidic prayer group and restricting the activities of the communal administration.35 In his two hostile pamphlets, the maggid David of Makow intensified the vehemence of anti-Hasidic polemics even further. He was a Torah scholar of the highest level who was revolted by the ways of the Hasidim, regarding them as a historical disaster of the first order and calling for “standing in battle formation” against “the sons of the devil, the worshipers of idols and Ba’al.” He hoped the rabbis of Germany would help the Mitnagdim of Lithuania to eliminate this evil from the world. David of Makow described the Hasidim as a wild and libertine cult whose members threw off every sexual and ethical restraint (“Men defile their fellows’ wives and fornicate and they have intercourse with women married to other men, and they say that bonds have been loosened to squeeze between the breasts of women”). The Hasidim were ignorant, drunkards, and adulterers, he said, and were suspected of homosexuality (“all of them gather at night and sleep in the same attic, and who knows what ugly deeds they do there”). He compared visits to the courts of zaddikim to Catholic pilgrimages, “to pray to the icon of Częstochowa.” In their vulgar hatred of Torah scholars, for example, “they take a staff, and on it is an image, and they show it to their evil band, and they point at the staff with their finger, and they say, this is a certain Torah scholar who died, and they hit it and shove it . . . and they spit in its face and sing bawdy songs to it and foul language.” In his opinion, they were similar to Christian movements of religious awakening such as the Quakers and also to skeptics (“Like the philosophers of now, who say that their way is better than the Torah and the tradition of the Sages”) and the Freemasons. He saw himself as the last soldier on the front in defense of religion, “especially at this time, when everyone wants to throw off the yoke of Torah and lighten the yoke of the Holy One, blessed be He, on them,” and with all his power, he implored the men and women who looked on from the balcony not to go up to the courts of zaddikim and not to revere them. David of Makow uttered a fervent prayer to God: “Do not remove me from the world before my time, until I can accomplish my purpose and desire to uproot and eliminate them, so that neither root nor branch remains of them, and the term ‘Hasid’ is not remembered or recalled, and it will not occur to anyone.”36 In the autumn of 1798, an appeal landed on the desk of the attorney general, Pyotr Lopukhin (1753–1827), in Saint Petersburg, signed on October 28 by

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Esther, the wife of Meir Ben Raphael, asking him and Czar Pawel I to intervene and liberate her husband and six other Hasidim of Vilna from imprisonment. Since the horrible night, she wrote, “when our husbands were taken to an unknown place, our troubles have become absolute desperation.” They had committed no sin, and only “the vengeful defamation of the community of Vilna and the good relations of the mayor with the heads of the community” caused this injustice. Ten days earlier, the wives had sent an urgent letter to the czar, but apparently, because of “the plotting of the community,” it had not reached its destination. If their husbands were not able to defend themselves, they would “be lost for no reason, and we, too, the women, will be lost, with our families.”37 The religious and political dispute between the Mitnagdim and the Hasidim was placed on the agenda of senior Russian officialdom. Dozens of documents were preserved in the office of the attorney general in Saint Petersburg, the earliest being a letter of defamation. A Jew regarded himself as injured because, he claimed, his sons joined the Hasidim and made a pilgrimage to Shneur Zalman. He complained that “they stole my money” and he was unable to trace them. He called himself Hirsh Ben David and sent two letters to Lopukhin on May 8 and 10, asking him to bring his warning against the Hasidim to the ears of the czar. Like David of Makow and others, he described Hasidism as a libertine sect (“They lead a life without the framework of the law, full of various pleasures, with full glory and splendor”), and he touched on a particularly sensitive point when he accused Shneur Zalman and his Hasidism of provocation: “In the region of  White Russia in the city of Łoźna a certain rabbi Zalman Ben Baruch popped up, hatched a plot, went, and gathered young Jewish men . . . with the intention of aiding the French Revolution.” Later testimony even refined the suspicion: “They plotted among themselves to join with Napoleon from France, who was fighting in Egypt at that time, and strengthening his army with armaments.” Pawel I ordered an investigation, and the governor of Vilna, Jacob Bulgakov (1743–1809), was asked to supply information. He recommended making arrests to ascertain the degree of danger posed by this group. Lopukhin also presented a memorandum about the “sect of Karliners” to Pawel I, a sect so secretive that it was difficult to penetrate it. Its leader had absolute authority; perhaps they were the Jewish equivalent of the Freemasons, the deists, or the Illuminati. The sending of money to the Land of Israel was particularly suspicious, for quite possibly the plot of Shneur Zalman lay behind it, as he had connections with “Jerusalem, Egypt, and other areas in Turkey.” In Lopukhin’s opinion, “the elimination of this sect will be beneficial to all the Jews, since its leader was very influential, so much so that they obey him with their eyes closed, even every cruel act he was capable of commanding them.” Twenty-two Hasidim,

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including Meir Ben Raphael, were arrested in Vilna, and Shneur Zalman was arrested and sent to Saint Petersburg in early October. Within a few days, everyone involved in the episode was convinced that the Hasidim were harmless to the state, and not a trace of “moral corruption” was found in their behavior. The czar ordered that the prisoners be freed. Seven of the Hasidim, who were on their way to interrogation in the capital, arrived in Riga, and from there they were returned home. The day of Shneur Zalman’s liberation (19 Kislev, which fell on November 16, 1798) became a holiday of redemption for his Hasidim, and it has been observed in Habad Hasidism since then.38 Shneur Zalman’s answers to the questions of the interrogators in Saint Petersburg are a fascinating document, attesting to the self-awareness of the Hasidic leader. It is a very personal document in which he speaks a great deal about himself, from the time of his youth until he gained a central place as an admired preacher, the innocent victim of envy and baseless hatred. I live very modestly, he said. Most of his livelihood came from his wife’s business as “a merchant in all sorts of produce in the city market, and also in other places, and she also has a house in the market and employs a barman there, selling brandy and liquor, and other beverages, and salt and oats and other things.” This exceptional testimony was also the first of its kind in which a Hasidic leader explained exactly what Hasidism was and why there was no reason to suspect it of anything. Although he claimed strenuously that it was not a new religion and there was no question of establishing a secret sect, in fact he revealed his deep awareness of its revolutionary nature as another movement of reform nourished by the climate of liberty. Hasidism was a response to the crisis in the rabbinate of Poland, because, before the Partitions, “rabbis served among us who were not honest, and they bought or leased the rabbinate from the governor of the city . . . because the king turned a blind eye.” Those rabbis were responsible for deepening the crisis because they provided a bad example of prayer without intention. Hasidism sought to correct this, and its innovation lay in “this arousal that awakened among us in recent times to pray with intention.” Shneur Zalman emphasized that contrary to its image as a broad popular movement, it was a minority group of men who worshipped God on a high level: “The masses call [the few men who pray with intention] Hasidim in all the countries of White Russia and Poland and most of Lithuania.” In his opinion, Hasidism was a movement of religious liberation (“for we were freed from the aforementioned rabbis”) that succeeded because of the Russian conquest, beginning with Katherine II. They were now free to pray as they wished; the authority of the rabbis had declined, their monopoly had vanished, and they were no longer permitted to purchase their positions.

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The joy at what appeared to be a decision in the political and religious conflict, which had been achieved with the assistance of senior Russian officials in the capital and in Lithuania, was shared by the Hasidim in Vilna. The balance of power was overturned, and the leaders of the Mitnagdim were accused of fraud, corruption, and smuggling. In February 1799, the lay leaders were replaced, and the new head of the congregation was none other than Meir Ben Raphael— formerly persecuted, now a persecutor. The counteroffensive in this prolonged, passionate, and fierce controversy was led this time by Rabbi Avigdor Ben H.aim, who had replaced Levi Yitsh.aq of Berdyczow in the rabbinate of the Pinsk community. He had paid a huge sum for the position, but he was discharged two years before the end of his ten-year contract. He claimed that the Hasidim, his sworn enemies, were responsible for that, and their gain in strength had undermined confidence in him. When Shneur Zalman criticized rabbis who had purchased their posts, he was apparently thinking of this rabbi. Avigdor ignored the decision to dismiss him and encountered humiliating violence: “They denied me my position by force, and to my great humiliation, they took away the chair intended for me in the house of prayer and put sand and dust there instead.”39 Consumed by this stinging insult and believing a terrible injustice had been done to him, the dismissed rabbi sought revenge and compensation. In the spring of 1800, Avigdor went to Saint Petersburg and lodged a severe complaint against the Hasidim and the leaders of Pinsk. He claimed they were the successors of the Sabbateans and were encouraging wanton living and attracting young people to them with cunning. He complained that he had been persecuted in Pinsk and driven into poverty, and he asked Pawel I to intervene, restrict the Hasidim, and punish those who had injured him: “I pin all my hopes on the mercy of our lord the great emperor, for it is his will to manage everything in good order and justice.” However, a clear document was drafted by the governor of Lithuania, Michael Kutuzov (1745–1813), who had gained fame as one of the generals who resisted Napoleon in his invasion of Russia, tracing the development of the episode connected with the Karliners. He argued that investigations had revealed nothing to connect them with any threat. Nevertheless, the complaints, mainly from the former rabbi of Pinsk, led to the second arrest of Shneur Zalman (November 9, 1800), and six days later, he found himself in the capital once again, under investigation. Again he was asked whether Hasidism was a sect of the Illuminati and whether it was subverting the foundations of the state. As with his first arrest, this was a dispute between a Mitnagged and a Hasid. First Avigdor ben H.aim and Shneur Zalman were confronted face-to-face; then a short dispute was conducted in writing, based on a document containing nineteen questions composed by the rabbi and translated into Russian. Shneur

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Zalman’s answer shows his sense of superiority over his adversary: “I labor in vain to bear the insults and mockeries and lies [of Avigdor Ben H.aim], who invents great plots of ours, which were never seen nor heard of in the world, except in the history of Poland, from their priests, who falsely accused the Jews of using human blood on Passover.” Under Russian rule, all this had passed from the world, and it was simply not worthwhile to the czar to waste time on this controversy. He attacked the Mitnagdim for “seeking to take revenge against us, since they are envious of our heart’s intention, which is without distracting thoughts.” This time, too, it was ruled that there was nothing to the defamation, and the Hasidim did not deviate from the Jews’ familiar loyalty to the state. ShneurZalman was freed from prison once again (November 28, 1800).40 Rabbi Avigdor did not give up and wrote a desperate letter to the Russian Senate, betraying the depth of his disappointment following the decision to exonerate the Hasidim and free Shneur Zalman. His letter presents the stages in his life as a gifted Talmudist, who had received respected rabbinical posts: “When I was in the royal city of Warsaw, I came and went in the courts of important ministers.” Then his life was destroyed by the hatred of the Hasidim. He wrote that he could not understand how “no judgment was ever passed on that sect for rebelling against religion and the monarchy.” Shneur Zalman’s interrogators refused to show Avigdor ben H.aim his answers to the nineteen questions. Had he read them, he would doubtless have been even more insulted. Not only did Shneur Zalman reject all of his claims as lies and false accusations, he also portrayed the rabbi with contempt as distorting the image of Hasidism and not sharing its high values and as a man who set the bad example of the inferior and corrupt rabbinate. While Shneur Zalman implored his Hasidim to avoid vengefulness, in this case he failed to conceal his revulsion. He emphasized that he never received gifts, saying, “and if I were to do so, what is that to Ben H.aim? Was he envious? He himself, when he was a rabbi, received gifts if they were offered,” and adding pointedly, “especially since he took up the rabbinate for that reason.” Defeated, Avigdor ben H.aim could only plead to the Senate, in vain, to allow him to continue the dispute and refute the accusations against him. “May the lords of the Senate, men of truth, for love of the truth act so that the truth that is with me may rise up with the falsehood of the aforementioned sect.”41 Similarly, the frustration of Israel Leibl, a native of Sluck who held the posts of preacher and dayan in the communities of Mogilev and Novogrudok in White Russia, set him on the warpath against “the new faith, who are the sect of the primeval serpent who are called by the name of Hasidim.” After the death of their great enemy, the Vilna Gaon, they were “happy at our discomfiture because of the death of our rabbi,” and their self-confidence was sky-high. Leibl also had a

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personal grudge, which nourished his hostility. In Mogilev, “I saw this plague all around and striking root.” Even more painful, Hasidism had stolen his only, beloved brother from him. He was “a most decent man, and learned, and they caught him in their net,” in cunning ways. Leibl spared no effort in removing him from their clutches and said that he wrote to him, telling him to separate “from that immoral life to which he was subject, which was against his previous character.” He even threatened his brother, but he continued to sink into the new world he had chosen. Nothing helped, so Leibl decided to devote his life to what he saw as an existential and humanistic war of the first order. Like David of Makow, he wrote polemical works, including Sefer viquah. (The Book of Dispute, published in Warsaw in 1798) and Qivrot hataava (The Graves of Appetite, see Num. 11:34), of which no copies are extant. In 1799, he wrote an anti-Hasidic pamphlet in German. His purpose was to warn against the danger posed not only to the Jewish religion, but also to the state and to human morality in general. He saw Hasidism as a violent, aggressive, and arrogant sect: “They made scholars the target of arrows to reject them and pursue them and to bite them like violent, rabid dogs, and day and night they do not cease mocking them.” The majority was paralyzed by fear, “because the aforementioned sect are greater enemies to us than all the nations of the world, and they have permitted the shedding of our blood like the blood of animals and of evil and harmful beasts.” From 1798 until his death at an unknown date, apparently in the last year of the century, Leibl wandered among the communities of Galicia with copies of his polemical works. He saw himself as a reformer and curer who was defending against the disease spread by Hasidism; however, his enemies appealed to the Austrian authorities and managed to have him detained. He complained that his enemies had taken revenge; “they delivered me over to the local authority like a most dangerous man.” Leibl wanted to reach the center of political power in order to raise the banner of warning, so he went to Vienna in January 1799. There he claimed he met the emperor Franz II and gave him a German translation of his writings against Hasidim. He claimed that his petition was accepted, and an order was given to forbid public assemblies of Hasidim in Galicia. As an adherent of Mendelssohn’s doctrine of tolerance, he believed that “by virtue of supreme Providence, we are living now in a happy time, when prejudices on both sides, though they have not been entirely erased, have been destroyed to a degree that we do not have to fear this danger.” Thus, during the revolutionary time of the last years of the century, this preacher espoused an optimistic vision: “Soon people will also pay attention to the rights of man to their full extent.” In these historical circumstances, it was only right to make sure that the image of the Jew was not stained by the Hasidim and their deceitful acts.42

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To evaluate the historical significance of Hasidism, which was advancing rapidly at the turn of the century, forty years after the death of the Ba’al Shem Tov, one can trace two contradictory paths. Although Shneur Zalman probably was unaware of the Christian religious awakening, which provided a broad, even global context for the Hasidic phenomenon, and even if it would be an exaggeration to claim that he believed in religious pluralism, in his self-image, his was a movement of religious revival that, to his joy and satisfaction, could function in a world of freedom. Gershon Hundert found that Hasidism, as a “spiritual revolution,” played a central role in the processes of change within Eastern European Judaism, as a movement whose social structure and ideas offered a new and attractive world. The Hasidic message “introduced a sense of spiritual possibility available to every man. A positive and optimistic orientation to the real world, which, Hasidim believed, hid the divine reality behind the world of appearance, was made available when a person attached himself to his tsaddik.” In his view, “Hasidism provided new answers to questions of meaning that affected the lives of hundreds and thousands of Jews.” The desperate warriors against Hasidism—Rabbi Avigdor Ben H.aim, David of Makow, and Israel Leibl—suffered from a deep feeling of injustice, injury, and humiliation. They thought of themselves as victims. They believed that Hasidism signaled a crisis in the Jewish religion and regarded the Hasidic leaders as bitter enemies who managed to deceive a large public as well as the government. They claimed that after the Vilna Gaon died, the contempt of the zaddikim for scholars increased, giving free rein to violence and revenge. “They are permitted to murder the persons who oppose them and to beat them and to inform on them,” Leibl reported downheartedly in Sefer viquah., and he listed several violent incidents. “They wanted to kill the great rabbi of the holy community of Volpa, and in any event they stripped him of his clothing so that he was forced to enter the city naked.” Leibl added that he, too, had suffered from them, such as “when they mocked me and wanted to hit me several times.”43 At this low point, after a quarter of a century of effort to condemn Hasidism, the Mitnagdim found themselves in a weak and defeated position. Their world was destroyed. No one gave heed to the warnings they sounded or took note of what they saw as the vulgarity and immoral bullying inherent in Hasidism. The death of the Vilna Gaon weakened the organized struggle by means of excommunication and left the arena to individuals like Leibl, who had to defend themselves with their backs to the wall. After the two interrogations of Shneur Zalman in Saint Petersburg, the Russian authorities turned away from this dispute, and in an edict of 1804 signed by Alexander I, they acknowledged the freedom of the Hasidim to do as they wished.

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Note s 1. Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2011), 73–81. 2. See Alexander Nehamas, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” Representations 74 (Spring 2001): 37–54; Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya, 1746–1828 (London: Phaidon Press, 1994), 123–146; Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting (Toledo: Thames & Hudson, 1999), 222–233; Victor I. Stochita and Anna Maria Coderch, Goya, The Last Carnival (London: Reaktion Books, 1999). 3. Manasseh Ben Israel, Rettung der Juden, Aus dem Englischen übersetzt. Nebst einer Vorrede von Moses Mendelssohn, in Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8 (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1983), 22–23. The quotation is from a letter to Johann Georg Zimmermann (September 1784) in Shmuel Feiner, Moses Mendelssohn, Sage of Modernity, trans. Anthony Berris (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 191. 4. See Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648–1815 (New York: Penguin, 2007), 636–653; William Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 354–362. 5. Abraham Ben H.ayat Trebitsch, Qorot ha’itim (1801 [5561]), here from the Lemberg edition of 1851, sections 164, 169, 182, 192–193. 6. See Cecil Roth, “Some Revolutionary Purims,” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 451–482; Francesca Bregoli, “The Jews of Italy (1650–1815),” in The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 7, The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 886–892. 7. See William Doyle, The Old European Order, 1660–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 362. 8. The Annual Register, or A View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1799 (London: Unknown, 1801); The Annual Register, or A View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1800 (London: Unknown, 1801), introduction, 220–236. 9. See Benigna von Krusenstjern, “῾O Jahrhundert! Komm, beginner . . .!,’ Die Jahrundertwende von 1800/1801 in der zeitgenössischen Publizistik,” in Jahrhundertwenden, Endzeit und Zukunftsvorstellungen vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 235–252; August Sauer, ed., Die deutschen Säculardichtungen an der Wende des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: B. Behr, 1901); August von Kotzebue, Das Neue Jahrhundert: Eine Posse in einem Akt (Leipzig: Eduard Kummer, 1836); Johannes Burkhardt, Die Entstehung der modernen Jahrhundertrechnung (Göppingen: Göppinger akademische Beiträge, 1971).

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10. National Zeitung der Teutschen, March 26, 1801, 279. 11. John Bowles, Reflections on the Political and Moral State of Society at the Close of the 18th Century (London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, 1801); Bowles, Reflections at the Conclusion of the War, Being A Sequel to Reflections on the Political and Moral State of Society at the Close of the 18th Century (London: Printed for F. and C. Rivington, 1801). 12. David Ramsay, A Review of the Improvements, Progress and State of Medicine in the XVIIIth Century (Charleston: W.P. Young, 1801). See also Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 22–23. 13. On the imagery of monsters in Jewish culture, see Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese, eds., Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History from the Middle Ages to Modernity (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). 14. See Gershon D. Hundert, “The Introduction to Divrei Binah by Dov Ber of Bolechow: An Unexamined Source for the History of the Jews in the Lwow Region in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,” AJS Review 33, no. 2 (2009): 225–269. 15. Isaac Euchel to Shalom Hacohen (2 Av, 5559), in Shalom Hacohen, Ketav yosher (Vienna: Anton Schmid, 1820), 97–98. 16. David Friedländer to Meir Eiger (March 30, 1799), in Yosef Maisel, “Briv fun Dovid fridlender,” YIVO Historishe Shriftn 2 (1937), 406–407; David Friedländer, Sendschreiben an seine hochwürdigen, Herrn Oberconsistorialrath und Probst Teller zu Berlin von einigen Hausvätern jüdischer Religion (Berlin: August Mylius, 1799); David Friedländer, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Wilhelm Abraham Teller, A Debate on Jewish Emancipation and Christian Theology in Old Berlin, ed. and trans. Richard Crouter and Julie Klassen (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004). 17. Eli’ezer Katzenellenbogen, Sefer zekher tsadiq (Altona: Bonn Brothers, 1805), fols. 1–20. See Jacob Katz, “R. raphael cohen, yerivo shel moshe mendelssohn,” in Halakha bameitsar: mikhsholim ‘al derekh haortodoqsia behithavuta (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 38–39. 18. Elazar Fleckeles, teshuva meahava, vol. 1 (Prague: Unknown, 1809), first introduction; Elazar Ben David [Fleckeles], Quntres ahavat david, Prague, in the year of “the polluted in the soul” [1800]; N. M. Gelber, “Di zikhronos fun mozes porges vegen dem frankisten-hoif in ofenbakh,” Historishe shriften 1 (1929): 253–296. See also Shmuel Werses, Haskala veshabtaut: toldotav shel mavaq (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), ch. 4; Jacob Katz, “Lesheelat haqesher bein hashabtaut levein hahaskala vehareforma,” in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History Presented to Alexander Altmann (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 83–100. On Hönigsberg and his complaint against persecution by the orthodox, see Gershom Scholem, “A Frankist Document from Prague,” Salo Baron: Jubilee Volume, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: The American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), 787–814.

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19. See A. Y. Brawer, Galitsia veyehudeiha; meh.qarim betoldot galitsia bameah hashmone-‘esre (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1956), 269–275. 20. See Vaclav Zacek, “Zwei Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frankismus in den böhmischen Ländern,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte der Juden in der Tschechoslowakei 9 (1938): 343–409; Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 248–256. 21. Sih.a bein shnat taf-quf-samekh uvein shnat taf-quf-samekh-alef (Prague: Unknown, 1800); See Ruth Kestenberg-Gladstein, “Mi haya meh.aber hasi h.a bein shnat taf-quf-samekh uvein shnat taf-quf-samekh-alef?,” Qiryat sefer 40 (1964–1965): 569–570; Werses, Haskala veshabtaut, 74–81. 22. See Hermann Vogelstein and Paul Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, vol. 2 (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1895), 350–356. 23. For the story of the tribulations that were visited on a Jewish man named Yissaskhar H.aim Carpi from the town of Revere at the end of the past century because of his love for the liberty of Italy, see Yissaskhar H.aim Carpi, Toldot y’ss’ h.’q (Cracow: Yosef Fisher, 1802); Baruch Mevorakh, ed., Napoleon utequfato (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1968), 38–53. 24. See Jozeph Michman and Marion Aptroot, eds., Storm in the Community: Yiddish Polemical Pamphlets of Amsterdam Jewry 1797–1798 (Cincinnati: The Hebrew Union College, 2002). 25. See Shmuel Ettinger, “Heyesodot vehamegamot be’itsuv mediniuto shel hashilton harusi klapei hayuehudim ‘im h.aluqat polin,” Bein polin lerusia (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1994), 217–233; Ettinger, “Taqanat 1804,” in Bein polin lerusia, 234–256; Matitiahu Mints, “He’ara aruka beshulei h.avat hada’at shel drezhavin mishnat 1800,” in Bein yisrael laumot: qovets mamarim shai leshmuel ettinger, ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1988), 103–112. 26. See David Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 84–91; Ya’aqov Eliahu Frank, “Heyakhol yehudi lehiyot ezrah. tov umo’il,” He’avar 19 (1972): 81–82. 27. Raphael Mahler, “Yahadut ameriqa vere’ayon shivat tsiyon betequfat hamahapekha haameriqanit,” Zion 15 (1950): 128–131; see also A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654–1875, ed. Morris U. Schappes (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 89–92; William Pencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 76–81; Jacob Marcus, “The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal World of Gershom Seixas,” Hebrew Union College Annual 40–41 (1969–1970): 409–467. 28. See Cyrus Adler, “A Political Document of the Year 1800,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 1 (1892): 111–115; Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States, 1654–1875, 92–99; Eli Faber, A Time for

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Planting: The First Migration, 1654–1820 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 136–141; Bennett Muraskin, “Benjamin Nones, Profile of a Jewish Jeffersonian,” American Jewish History 83, no. 3 (1995): 381–385. 29. “Letter, Recently Written from a Jew to his Brethren, Concerning the Establishment of a New Jewish Republic,” Monthly Visitor and Pocket Companion 4 (August 1798): 383–385; see Ben Zion Dinur, “Sheelat hageula vedarkheiha beyemei reshit hahaskala ufulmus haemantsipatsia harishona,” Bemifne hadorot (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1972), 343–353. 30. See the letter and its translation into Hebrew in the catalog of the exhibition, Napoleon Was Here! Bonaparte’s Expedition to the Middle East, 1798– 1801 (Jerusalem: Israel National Library, 2017), 39–41. 31. See N. M. Gelbar, “Napoleon veerets yisrael,” in Sefer dinburg: qovets divrei ‘iyun umeh. qar mugash leben tsion dinur (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1949), 263–288; Yitsh.aq Rivkind, “Dapim bodedim,” in Yerushalayim, lezekhr avraham lunts (Jerusalem: Darom, 1928), 143–144; Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 200–201; Simon Schwarzfuks, Napoleon, The Jews and the Sanhedrin (London: Routledge, 1979), 22–27. 32. On Rabbi Nachman’s journey to the Land of Israel, see Nathan Sternherz of Nemirov, Shivh. ei hara”n (Jerusalem: Kedem, 1961); Sternherz, Sefer h. ayei mohara”n, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Meshech Hanhal, 1985); Arthur Green, Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1980), ch. 2; Ada Rapaport-Albert, “Shnei meqorot letiur nesi’ato shel r’ nah.man mibratslav leerets yisreal,” H.asidim veshabtaim, anashim venashim (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2015), 86–94. 33. Reconstruction of the journey is based on two sources: Sternherz, Shivh. ei hara”n; and Sternherz, Sefer h. ayei mohara”n. 34. On myth and reality in the attitudes of Hasidic leaders to Napoleon, see Mevorakh, Napoleon utequfato, 72–63, 182–183; H.aim Meir Heilman, Sefer beit rabbi, vol. 1 (Berdyczow: Sheftel, 1902), fols. 47–52; Immanuel Etkes, Ba’al hatanya: rabi shneur zalman milyadi vereshita shel h. asidut h. abad (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2012), 386–413; Mordecai Zalkin, “Im yenatseah. bonapart: napoleon vehahanhaga harabanit bemizrah. eiropa,” Mayim bedlaiav 19–20 (2008– 2009): 193–207; Hillel Levine, “῾Should Napoleon Be Victorious . . .’: Politics and Spirituality in Early Modern Jewish Messianism,” in The Sabbatian Movement and its Aftermath: Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism, vol. 2, ed. Rachel Elior (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 65–83; François Guesnet, “The Turkish Cavalry in Swarzedz, or: Jewish Political Culture at the Borderlines of Modern History,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 6 (2007): 227–248. 35. On the struggles in the Vilna community after the death of the Gaon, see Mordecai Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim: letoldot hapulmus shebeineihem

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bashanim 5532–5575 (1772–1815), vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), 204–229; ibid., vol. 2, 352; Yisrael Klausner, Vilna betequfat hagaon: hamilh. ama haruh. anit vehah. evratit beqehilat vilna betequfat hagra (Jerusalem: Sinai, 1942), 28–30; Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 250–252; Shimon Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), 257. 36. The writings of the maggid David of Makow are found in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 2, 9–250. 37. The letter of Esther Vilenska, the wife of Meir Ben Raphael, to Duke Piotr Vasilovitz Lopukhin, the attorney general (October 28, 1798) in Kerem h. abad 4, no. 1 (1992): 69, document 29. 38. The clearest account of Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s imprisonment, along with other Hasidim, in 1798, can be found in Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 248–279. Many documents about the episode were published by Yehoshua Mondshine, “Shnei maasarav shel rabeinu hazaqen leor te’udot h.adashot,” Kerem h. abad 4, no. 1 (1992): 17–76; Mondshine, Hamaasar harishon (Jerusalem: Knizhniki Publishing Houses, 2012). See also Abraham Ber Gottlober, Zikhronot umas’aot, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1976), 142; Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 257–263. 39. See Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 215–222; Mordecai Nadav, “R’ Avigdor ben h.aim umilh.amto bah.asidut bepinsk ubelita,” Zion 36 (1972): 200–219. 40. On Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady’s second imprisonment, see Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 230–294; Mondshine, “Shnei maasarav shel rabeinu hazaqen leor te’udot h.adashot,” 77–108; Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 288–316; Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 264–278. 41. Avigdor Ben H.aim’s appeal to the Senate: Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 1, 288–290. Shneur Zalman’s answer: Mondshine, Hamaasar hasheni, 99. 42. Israel Leibl’s polemical writings can be found in Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 2, 251–338. His work against heresy and permissiveness: Israel Leibl, Sefer even boh. an (Frankfurt: Elssner, 1799). See Dubnow, Toldot hah. asidut, 278–286; Gershom Scholem, “Le’inyan r’ yisrael leibl ufulmuso neged hah.asidut,” Zion 20 (1955): 27–38, 84–88; Rachel Manekin, “A Jewish Lithuanian Preacher in the Context of Religious Enlightenment: The Case of Israel Löbel,” Jewish Culture and History 13, no. 2–3 (August–November 2012): 134–152. 43. Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century, A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 209–210; Israel Leibl, Sefer vikuah. (1798); Wilenski, H.asidim umitnagdim, vol. 2, 266–325.

k

CONCLUSION “No More Fear, No Shame. . . . I Live in Peace with Everything around Me”: From Brendel to Dorothea

Both the victorious campaign of Hasidism and the desperate struggle waged against it by preachers like Israel Leibl and David of Makow took place in the exclusively male domain of Jewish society. Women were excluded from the world of zaddikim, rabbis, scholars, and Kabbalists and from the power struggles among the community leaders, and few of them shared in their generation’s dreams of liberty and freedom to choose one’s path in life. About half a century had passed since the passage of the regulations against women peddlers in Lithuania, which, for a moment, laid bare the fate of the women who made a living by selling “merchandise to the homes of gentiles.” It seemed that very little had changed in the miserable lives of the wandering poor, and not only in Eastern Europe. Entire families of desperate Jewish beggars camped at the gates of Wolfenbüttel at the end of the century, waiting to receive charity. “Men, women, and children” were dressed in “torn clothing, and some of them were sick and emaciated.” In Prenzlau, in northeast Prussia, for example, Hannah, a Jewish beggar woman, was arrested on June 17, 1799, for crossing the border without transit documents. She told her interrogators the story of her life in the past winter. With no aim or destination and lacking any secure grip on life, she wandered alone on the roads from village to village, whose names she barely remembered, occasionally finding a roof over her head in houses and in the beds of servant women, and on the Sabbath, she was hosted by Jews who also occasionally gave her charity. In Strasbourg, she slept one night and “received travel money,” she reported, “from an elderly Jewish matron whose name I don’t know. That charitable woman sent her Sabbath servant with me, and she escorted me to Neu-Brandenburg, in Mecklenburg, without anyone warning me not to go back across the border.” On one of her journeys, her feet

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froze, and to her great good fortune, she was taken back to Prenzlau, where they took care of her in a shelter for the poor. Six weeks later, her legs were cured, and she continued roaming between Prussia and Mecklenburg, surviving from donation to donation.1 In absolute contradiction, precisely then a group of young elite women in Germany from the high Jewish bourgeoisie stood out. These women, who were born in the 1760s and 1770s, crossed entirely different borders from those of Hannah, the beggar woman, and broke through the barriers of culture, religion, and gender. With great talent for writing and conversation, women like Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin, whom we have already met, displayed a thirst for knowledge and integrated into the society of authors, scientists, and thinkers of the first order in the transition from the culture of Enlightenment to romanticism. While the grandson of Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka, one of the first Hasidic zaddikim, was wandering in the Land of Israel on a mystical journey, and while the grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, Rabbi Mosheh H.ayim Ephrayim of Sudilkov (1737–1800), was seeking to strengthen faith in zaddikim in general and to perpetuate the greatness of his grandfather, with whom, in his dream, he fused completely (“I attached myself to his holy body and within his beard”), Esther Gad (1767–1833), the granddaughter of Rabbi Jonathan Eyubeschütz, was striving to make her mark on the republic of letters in Germany.2 At the age of twenty-four, in her home city of Breslau, she had married Samuel Brand. They divorced five years later. Gad-Bernard was one of nine divorced women in a group of about twenty Jewish women who were known in the high society of Berlin. For her, this was a first step toward independence, which entailed abandoning her Jewish society of origin. She moved to Berlin with her two children, and, as an enthusiastic devotee of modern literature, opera, and theater, she adopted the values of the Enlightenment and regarded herself as an autonomous person. At the balls that were held in spas at the end of the century, opportunities arose to form social connections that cut through class and religious boundaries. In 1797, Gad met the romantic author whom she admired, Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825), at Franzensbad. Their friendship continued in letters, and when he came to Berlin in the summer of 1800, she was overwhelmed with excitement, hosted him in her home, and spent time with him among the circle of her friends. An echo is heard of her Jewish lineage as the granddaughter of a famous rabbi in a letter to Richter, who had lent her a copy of his latest novel, Titan: “I finished reading your book this morning, but [I felt like] someone who has just visited his beloved [and already wants] to return. Jews hold a banquet when they have finished [studying] an important work. They called it, or still call it, a ‘Ziem’ [siyum, or conclusion]. Did you know

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that, beloved author?” However, her cultural world was far distant from that of her grandfather and from Talmud scholars. The issue of gender discrimination perturbed her particularly. Gad published a feminist article in the journal Der Kosmopolit in 1798 in which she attacked the prejudices of Joachim Kampe (1746–1818), a leader among the German scholars who specialized in educational reform. In her opinion, he belittled women and restricted their ability to take part in intellectual discourse. Contrary to this “monstrous idea,” Gad argued that women must not be excluded from contributing to the progress of “general happiness” by means of expanding knowledge and the spread of truth: “I do not see why a woman’s pen should not do this, if she is capable of it.” Because of her struggle for equality, she was called the German Wollstonecraft. Her abandonment of Judaism became final when, in the early nineteenth century, she moved to England, converted to Christianity, and changed her name from Esther to Lucie. She married the physician of Prince Edward, the son of George III, and became known as Madame Lucie Domeier. In her youth, she wrote a cantata in German for the opening of the modern German school in Breslau, expressing hopes for equality of the Jews of Prussia. However, ten years later, she asserted that Judaism had completed its historical task and was “a dead religion.”3 In 1799, the young and daring author Friedrich Schlegel published Lucinde, causing a sensation in the world of German letters. By penetrating to the depths of the relations between Julius and Lucinde, Schlegel examined the tension between love and friendship and between erotic attraction and intellectual discourse among men and women, doing away with the boundaries between the private and intimate domain and the public arena. Schlegel, one of the fathers of romantic culture, believed that love was the new religion, and no restrictions— not religious, moral, or social—should be imposed on it. The peak of love was the absolute spiritual and physical fusion into a single self. In Lucinda, Schlegel also opened up his bedroom to shocked readers. Julius’s beloved was a twin soul and an object of sexual desire: He covered her with caresses and went mad with ecstasy when the loveable little head finally fell on his breast like on overly full flower sinking on its stem. Without reserve her slender figure pressed itself close to him, the silky locks of her golden hair flowed over his hand, the bud of her beautiful mouth opened in delicate desire, and an unaccustomed fire shone and languished in her devout, dark blue eyes. Now she resisted only weakly his boldest caresses. Soon even this resistance ceased, she suddenly let her arms fall, and everything was surrendered to him, the tender virginal body and the fruits of her young breasts.4

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The character of Lucinde was not fictional. The readers of the novel knew very well that she was the poetical image of Schlegel’s beloved, Dorothea Veit, who was more than seven years his senior and already the mother of two sons. A stormy love affair united the two after they met for the first time in Herz’s salon, and in Lucinde, he described their relations as they took place. The feelings of the woman, desperately in love, were immortalized in his literary work, and the body of Moses Mendelssohn’s eldest daughter, desiring to surrender, was revealed to all. The bond between Dorothea and Schlegel transcended any gossip that welled up in Prussian high society. After Dorothea’s divorce from her Jewish husband, the couple moved to Jena in the company of the romantic circle of Novalis, Schiller, and others. Five years later, Dorothea converted to Protestantism and married Schlegel. Dorothea was the same age as Herz, the lady of society and literature from Berlin, boxing champion Daniel Mendoza of London, and Polish freedom fighter Berek Joselewicz. All gained great fame in their own realm. Dorothea was an author in her own right. Her novel, Florentin, about an Italian nobleman who set out on journeys in Central Europe, was the first novel published by a Jewish woman. Unlike the memoirs of Glückel of Hameln a hundred years earlier, Dorothea wrote in German and not in a Jewish language. All the characters in her novel belonged to Christian society, and she did not wish to keep her work for herself and her family. Rather, she published it in print so as to reach a large audience who would acknowledge her talents. However, like her father, whose first philosophical works appeared on Lessing’s initiative, without revealing the author’s name, Florentin also was published under the name of the editor, Schlegel, without naming the author. Despite these reservations, we must not underestimate the significance of her ascent to the literary stage. She began writing Florentin in 1799 and finished it in 1800. The theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was among her close friends, received constant reports from Dorothea about her progress in writing, and he was one of the first readers to praise the book. Unlike him, author and publisher Frederika Unger (1751–1813) was hostile to Jewish women like Dorothea, whose writing she regarded as mediocre, and whose only ambition was to be accepted in a social salon. She refused to publish the novel. However, another publisher accepted the manuscript gladly and even paid an advance, which alleviated Dorothea and Schlegel’s financial straits in Jena.5 Dorothea’s Florentin was a young romantic literary hero, poet, musician, and painter; he was thrilled by natural landscapes, sank into melancholy moods, sought the essence of his self, and saw himself as a stranger and isolated. However, Florentin was also a free man in the Enlightenment spirit; he was a critical

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thinker with a strong, independent will who succeeded in freeing himself from the talons of the Catholic Church. Monks had taken control over his mother and sought to prepare him and his sister for monastic life. Mirroring Dorothea’s personal feelings when she wrote Florentin, the novel is a song of praise for freedom. As though in correspondence with her father’s early work, Qohelet musar, her book begins with descriptions of nature, as the earth frees itself in springtime from the bonds of winter. The teenage protagonist’s self-liberation from religious strictures is described like the life story of Solomon Maimon, the Polish immigrant to Germany. Florentin underwent years of rigid and terrible education at the hands of priests, who oppressed his spirit, but he managed to develop stubborn resistance. Mendelssohn combated religious fanaticism, and his daughter Dorothea acquired quite a bit of that humanistic sentiment. In the book, Florentin noted that he lived in a tomb. He and his sister were separated from their mother (he would later learn that she was not his real mother), who sacrificed her only son to the priests of blind superstition. Even during his miserable years, the slightest freedom filled his soul with a secret feeling of victory. His greatest ambition was to free himself from the hard-hearted, impervious tyrants and to no longer fear them. Though he ultimately fulfilled that ambition, his sister, to his distress, surrendered. After many vicissitudes on the roads of Central and Western Europe, Florentin, who was earning a scant living as a portrait painter, wanted to sail to American and join the struggle of the colonies against oppression. In a flashback that brings the story back two decades, he was determined to fight in the ranks of the republican army in America because he wanted the people to succeed in liberating themselves. Dorothea, as we have seen, was sympathetic to the French revolutionaries and those who struggled against dictatorship, and echoes of the revolution and its wars are clearly heard in her novel: Florentin said that he did not wish to fight for dictators, but, like the heroes of the ancient world, for freedom. He was impressed by the great sight of a new country that created itself, and such a war appeared to be a proper mission for him. The Jewish writer went far in her social criticism when she had Florentin meet with his family—Count Schwarzenberg, his wife, Eleanora, and his sister Clementina. In a kind of economic and feminist utopia, the two enlightened women manage the villages and towns under their control in full harmony. They take care of the poor, the sick, and the children, and they do not hold themselves above the lower classes. Clementina is a talented musician, a reader, and a student; she is an independent unmarried woman who respects other people’s freedom of opinion and find solutions to the distress of the weak. A new world appears to Florentin, as if he had found a golden age that he thought was lost forever. The novel

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is not didactic but is primarily the story of the formation of a romantic triangle: Florentin is in love with Juliana, who is engaged to Edward, and he flees so as not to infringe upon his friend’s happiness and that of the girl who captured his heart. The characters of Florentin are motivated by the quest for happiness. At that point in her life, Dorothea was in love with Schlegel, and before she discovered spiritual satisfaction in religious faith, she elaborated on her dream of finding enjoyment and happiness in love.6 About two years before Dorothea finished Florentin, the following entry was recorded in the minutes of the rabbinical court of the Berlin community: “Appeared before us, the tribunal of justice, none other than his honor Simon the son of his honor Juda Weizenheusen of blessed memory, along with his wife, mistress Brendel the daughter of the late, our honorable teacher and rabbi Moses of Dessau.” This was the couple, Simon and Veit. The husband declared to the judges, most likely with deep grief, “My wife Brendel wants to be divorced from me. I did everything possible to prevent her from this intention, but she remains determined and therefore I agreed to divorce her under several conditions.” The husband demanded guardianship of the sons, Jonas and Philip, and he agreed that the younger son could stay with his mother until he was ten. Since Dorothea was already in a relationship with Schlegel, Simon stipulated that if she remarried or converted, Philip would immediately be returned to his father. The agreement between Simon and Dorothea was signed two days before the end of 1798, and the bill of divorce was issued shortly afterward (January 11, 1799). After sixteen years of marriage to Simon Veit—a banker who was nearly a decade older and was a member of an elite family of Berlin—and after the birth of four children and the loss of two of them in infancy, Dorothea moved into a house of her own. Her former husband’s efforts to provide an excellent education to his children was successful. They both became exceptional painters who gave a special romantic expression to Christian painting of the Nazarene school, but the Jewish family fell apart, and Jonas and Philip converted to Catholicism. For Dorothea, divorce was liberating. The most immediate and intimate document in which she revealed her feelings was a letter to a friend, the Swedish poet and diplomat of her own age, Karl Gustav Brinckmann, whom she had known during his service in Berlin and who was now in Paris. She wrote: “Three weeks ago, after arguments and many scenes, after doubts and hesitations, I finally divorced Veit, and I am living alone.” She lost quite a bit from the crisis in her marriage, and from “the shipwreck, which freed me from prolonged servitude. I didn’t save anything except a very small income, which will enable me to live in great penury, with great courage . . . my piano, and the pretty desk I got from

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you.” Though she had paid a high price, it was far less than the feeling of liberty that flooded her. She felt like “a freed slave” who could say, for the first time in his life, that something belonged to him. Now “I am free from fear that I will have to suffer an unpleasant conversation, annoying presence, or even humiliating coarseness.” A heavy burden had fallen from her. “I am happy and in a good mood, no more fear, no shame. . . . I live in peace with everything around me.” She had saved herself at the last minute from a life that was death. True, public opinion was opposed, and rumors had certainly even reached Paris, but she was only sorry that she hadn’t taken the step earlier.7 Dorothea’s great yearning for happiness and the initiation of her divorce are reflective of a formative moment in the liberation and independence of the individual person. At the end of the eighteenth century, the powerful trends that had throbbed throughout it came to fruition. After a hundred years, the modern ethos of activism and personal independence had finally come together, paving the way for the embrace of humanistic values, liberty, and happiness. About twenty years earlier, Dorothea’s father, Mendelssohn, who desired to reform his Jewish brethren, had imagined happy days of tolerance and humanism and tried to take “the first step toward the culture” of his nation, in defiance of the conservative rabbis; now, his daughter completed the course that she had plotted for herself toward her personal fulfillment, ignoring social criticism. We opened the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century in the year 1700 with a look with a look at the life of Glückel of Hameln, a businesswoman. Glückel’s great-grandson made sure that her autobiographical writing in Yiddish could, in the future, enter the bloodstream of Jewish creativity. At the turn of the century (December 11, 1799), H.aim Glikl of Hamel, who studied medicine in Königsberg, served as a physician in the community of Frankfurt am Main, and was the son and grandson of rabbis from Bavaria, finished copying the version of the manuscript that would be preserved in his family for another hundred years or so, until it was printed for the first time.8 A hundred years had passed since his great-grandmother, Glückel, had entered into an unhappy second marriage in Metz, because she had accepted, against her will, the social norms. Like Dorothea five generations distant from her, Glückel confided to her intimate journal that her marriage to Hirsch Levi was a trap—“shackles and bands of iron.” However, Glückel, who had shown quite a bit of independence and personal ambition, did not rebel. As she grew older, her commitment to the religion grew stronger. By contrast, the decision of women like Gad-Bernard and Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit at the end of the eighteenth century to exit marriages in which they found no satisfaction or happiness was an expression of yearning for independence and adoption of the

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modern ethos. The similarity and contrast between women at the beginning of the century and at its end demonstrate the historical process very well. Glückel wrote her memoirs to overcome melancholy after the death of her first husband. Dorothea and Esther wrote to find happiness and to gain recognition. Women like them, who had undergone radical acculturation, were of course a small and privileged minority. On the other hand, Hannah, the wandering beggar woman at the bottom of the social ladder, was satisfied if she could get food from day to day, a temporary shelter, and a bed. We began the story of the second half of the century with the regulation against the poor women from Lithuania who made a living by peddling. These women also did not disappear. Despite these reservations, it is impossible not to attribute dramatic significance to the many channels for change that underlie the biography of the Jewish eighteenth century, the first century of the modern period. From a historical vantage point, the transformations that this biography has traced were indeed dizzying. The belief that it was feasible to attain happiness and improve the world was held by many people, even when reality was inconsistent with the aspiration and the vision. Refusal to be reconciled with reality nourished the revolutionary and reformist spirit. Among the Jews and their supporters, a dream of religious tolerance arose that would put an end to the servitude of generations. The boundaries between the traditional and the modern, between the old and the new, between religiosity and secularism had just begun to be drawn, but the features of life in the modern age were already clear, as were the dilemmas, the confusions of identity, the deep differences of opinion, and the schisms. By the end of the century, individualism and independence were being embraced; this was exemplified by both Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who boasted that “everyone will need me, and they all will desire to hear the innovations that I innovate constantly and at every moment,” and Dorothea, who proclaimed her right to love and happiness and entered the gates of the nineteenth century as a free human being.

Note s 1. See Jacob Toury, Die Eintritt der Juden ins deutsche Bürgertum: Eine Dokumentation (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1972), 151–152, 154–155. 2. Mosheh H.ayim Ephrayim of Sudilkov, Sefer degel mah.ane efraim (Berdyczow: Unknown, 1809), in the appendix to the stories of his dreams. 3. See Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, “‘Hanefesh netulat min hi’: ester gad vehaneorut,” Historia 22 (2009): 76–104; Naimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013), 107–120; Karin Rudert, “Die Wiederentdeckung einer deutschen ῾Wollstonecraft’: Esther

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Gad Bernard Domeier für Gleichberechtigung der Frauen und Juden,” Quaderni 10 (1988): 213–261; Barbara Hahn, “῾Geliebteste Schriftsteller’: Esther Gads Korrespondenz mit Jean Paul,” Jahrbuch der Jean-Paul-Gesellschaft 25 (1990): 7–42. 4. Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde: Ein Roman (Berlin: Heinrich Frölich, 1799); Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 80. See Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2011), 65–67. 5. Friedrich Schlegel, ed., Florentin: Ein Roman, vol. 1 (Lübeck und Leipzig: Friedrich Bohn, 1801); Dorothea Schlegel, Florentin: Ein Roman, ed. Wolfgang Nehring (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2012); Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit Schlegel, Florentin: A Novel, trans. Edwina Lawler and Ruth Richardson (Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1988); Liliane Weissberg, “The Master’s Theme, and Some Variations: Dorothea Schlegel’s Florentin as Bildungsroman,” Michigan Germanic Studies 13, no. 2 (1987): 169–181; Naimark-Goldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin, 120–134. 6. Quotations are from Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit Schlegel, Florentin: Ein Roman. 7. The divorce documents of Brendel and Simon Veit were recorded in the rabbinical court of Berlin in 5559 (1799) and are preserved in the Jacob Jacobson Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, folder 178, box 6. The letter from Dorothea Mendelssohn to Karl Gustav von Brinckmann (February 2, 1799) can be found in Ernst Behler, ed., Briefe von und an Friedrich und Dorothea Schlegel (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1985–1987), 223–224; Jeannine Blackwell and Susanne Zantop, Bitter Healing: German Women Writers 1700–1830 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 239–241. See also NaimarkGoldberg, Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin, 124. 8. Glikl: Memoirs 1691–1719, ed. Chava Turniansky, trans. Sara Friedman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2019).

INDEX

Abbt, Thomas, 65, 198 Abraham, Jakob, 64 Abraham Ben Joseph, 25 Abraham Ben Shlomo, 209–10 Abraham of Kalisk, 222, 282, 283, 284–85, 443 Abrahams, Esther, xiv, 404–5 absolutism, enlightened: and Catherine the Great, 245; and citizenship of Jews, 503; and coronation of Joseph II, 199; and Friedrich II’s General Privilege decree, 9; and Isaak’s Jewish settlement in Sweden, 293; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 364, 365, 453; and Maria Theresa’s policy for Trieste, 243 acculturation/assimilation: and abandonment of Hebrew language, 552; in America, 139–40; barriers to, 92–93; Birkenthal on, x; Butrymowicz’s advocacy for, 504; and changing behavioral norms, 253–55; in outward appearance, 328; and secularization trends, x; and Wolfssohn’s Sih�a beerets hah�ayim, 495 Acre, 282–83, 548, 565, 567, 568–69 Adams, John, 191, 562–63 Adath Jeshurun congregation, 560 Addison, Joseph, 157 Adler, Nathan, 329, 537 Adlersthal, Baron Wolf von, 306. See also Eybeschütz, Wolf

Adrianople, 82 adultery, 212–13 age of criticism, xiii, 206, 319, 352–53, 364, 371 Age of Philosophy, xv aging and old age, 130–31 Aharon of Karlin, 222–23 Aharonowicz, Joseph, 507 Ahutoru, Tahitian native, 188 Albels, H·aim, 131 alcohol, Hogarth on destructive pleasures of, 47 Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, 577 Alexander of Regensburg, Isaac, 368 Ali Bey al-Kabir, 276, 283 al-Jazzar, Ahmad, 283, 567 al-Omar, Daher, 283 Alon bakhut (Haephrati), 493 Altona: and Cohen’s conservative worldview, 328, 555; education reform in, 355; Emden–Eybeschütz dispute, 4, 14–33, 39; Emden’s sermon to community in, 262; Eybeschütz, Wolf ’s Sabbatean center in, 123, 125; Friedburg on Jewish community of, 327–28; and Levin’s Mitspe yoqtael, 441; Maimon in, 410; permissive attitudes in, 211; and Posner’s challenge to rabbinical authority, 356–57 American colonies. See North American colonies The American Crisis (Paine), 354

593

594

I n de x

Amsterdam: Azulai’s travels in, 79, 280; changing behavioral norms in, 253–54; and children born out of wedlock, 212; citizenship of Jews in, 514; culture war in Jewish, 560; and earthquake of 1756, 42–43; flooding of 1784, 394–95; Geldern’s travels in, 83; language skills of Jews in, 371; and rebellion in Dutch Republic, 400; and winter of 1783–84, 392–93 ‘Amudei beit yehuda [The Columns of the House of Judah] (Horowitz), 209, 358 ‘Amudei hashamayim [The Pillars of the Heavens] (Schick), 324 amulets: of Azulai, 276; Emden–Eybeschütz dispute over, 4, 15–18, 20–21, 23, 24–25, 26, 27–31, 39, 106; of Falk, 120; of Geldern, 302 The Analysis of Beauty (Hogarth), 146 animal magnetism, 303 Annual Register, 196 Ansbach, 146 Anton, Karl (formerly Moshe Gershon Cohen), 28 Apologie (De Pinto), 163–65 Apology for the Jews (Hourwitz), 451 apostasy, 316 ‘Aqitsat ‘aqrav (Emden), 31 Arabs, 414–16 Arieh Leib, Saul Ben, 19, 23, 42–43 Arieh Leib Ben Mordecai, 234–35 aristocracy, 56, 177–78, 186 Arnstein, Adam, 408 Arnstein, Joseph, 408 Arnstein, Nathan Benedict David, 368, 421 The Art of Boxing (Mendoza), 434 arts, Rousseau’s critique of, 48 asceticism, 329 Ascher, Saul, 455 Asser, Mozes Salomon, 516 assimilation. See acculturation/assimilation Atias, David, 318–19, 328 Attias of Bordeaux (rabbi), 487 Augustus III, King of Poland, 101 Australian prison colony, 404–5 Austria: education reform in, 309; feudalism in, 308–9; Franz II’s reaction against toleration, 513; and Jew Edict (Judenordnung) of Maria Theresa, 309;

and Jewish modernization, 369; Jewish population of, 243; and Jews of Galicia, 242–44; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 265, 363–68, 369, 452–53, 512–13; Joseph II’s rule in, 198–99; and loss of Silesia, 51; and Marie Antoinette’s marriage to Louis XVI, 186; military service of Jews in, 453–56, 466; and Partition of Poland, 237, 239, 242–44; restrictions imposed on Jews, 365–66; and revolt of Bohemian peasants, 265, 267–68; rights of Jews in, 243–44; and Seven Years’ War, 39, 50, 52, 60, 64; torture abolished in, 261; war with France, 480, 513; war with Turkey, 454. See also Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor; Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon (Maimon), 298 auto-da-fé, 42, 44, 53, 166 autonomy, individual: erosion of, 9–12; and humanistic trends, 261; and human rights, 314; Karigal’s criticisms of, 275; and tension with rabbinical establishment, 326; Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye on religious authorities, 331–32 Avigdor, Shmuel Ben, 220–21, 231, 419, 445–46 Avigdor Ben H·aim, 574–76, 577 Avraham of Copenhagen, Shimon Ya’aqov, 393–94 Avraham of Kalisk, 233 Aziodo, Ya’aqov, 281 Azulai, H·aim Yosef David, xiv; in Amsterdam, 280; background of, 72; and Calmer, 310; death of wife, 277; and Emden–Eybeschütz dispute, 78; in France, 279–80, 281–82; and Jew Bill in England, 89; last years of life in Livorno, 536; and Marie Antoinette’s pregnancy, 276–77; as member of rabbinical elite, 81, 536; and rebellion of Ali Bey al-Kabir, 276; and religious decrees of Pius VI, 307; and Salvador, 90; travel journal of, 74–80, 276–82 Ba’al Shem of Michelstadt, 537–38 Ba’al Shem Tov (Israel Ben Eliezer; BESHT): ascent of the soul experienced

I n de x by, 118; death of, 119; and Dov Ber of Międzyrzecz, 119–20, 222; and executions for blood libels in Poland, 96–97; expertise in magic spells for health, 17; and Frankist scandal, 118, 119, 125; and Hasidic movement, 119–20; and Lurianic Kabbalah of Safed, 344; on prayer, 349, 523; publication of stories from, 521; on redemption, 350–51; and Satan, 119 Bachrach, Michael, 557 badges worn by Jews, 307–8, 519, 559 Balsamo, Giuseppe, 301–2 Bank of England, 56 Banks, Joseph, 151, 152, 391 Bar Confederation, 180, 181, 183, 193, 238 Baron von Grotthuss, 408 Barras, Paul, 565 Bartal, Israel, 185, 309–10, 508 Bassan, Israel Benjamin, 367 Batavian Republic, 563 beards worn by men: Cohen on, 328, 356–57; and French Revolution, 486; and Gordon’s conversion, 425; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 365, 455; and religious permissiveness, 537 Beccaria, Cesare, 196–97 Beere, Richard, 510 Beer Street (Hogarth), 47 beggars, 11, 137, 534, 583–84, 590 Beit midot [The House of Virtues] (Margolioth), 330 Belgrad, 82 Belinfanti, Isaac Hacohen, 208 Benavente, Samuel Baruch, 208 Bendavid, Lazarus, 497–98, 530, 531 Benedict XIV, Pope, 95, 98 Benjamin, Jacob, 482 Benjamin, Levi, 362 Bennett, Solomon, 531–32, 539 Ben porat yosef (Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye), 350 Berkovitz, Jay, 368, 466, 479, 486 Berlin, Germany: conversions to Christianity in, 407–9, 418, 419; divorced women in, 584; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 362; Haskalah’s collapse in, 553; and Maimon, 299, 300; and Mendelssohn’s

595

Netivot hashalom, 318–23; as scholarly center, 371; schools and education in, 323, 330, 371, 377; and Seven Years’ War, 62–64, 65; status of Jews in, 449; Wessely on cultural awakening in, 323–24; and winter of 1783–84, 393; women from Jewish bourgeoisie in, 406–7, 584 Berlinische Monatsschrift, 390–91, 422 Bernhard, Isaac, 56 Berr, Berr-Isaac, 463, 464, 466, 479, 480 Berr, Max, 482 Besamim rosh (Levin), 536 BESHT. See Ba’al Shem Tov Bierbrauer, Johann, 136–37 Bing, Isaiah Berr, 450, 483 Birkenthal of Bolechow, Dov Ber: on blood libel accusations of Frankists, 106, 114, 115, 117–18; on Frank, 109, 111; on Leah Horowitz, 405; optimism of, x, 552; and Partition of Poland, 238; and Poland’s decline, 183–84, 185; on Poland’s taxation of Jews, 183–84, 185 Black people, 358–59, 478 Blanning, Tim, 364, 389, 546 Bloch, Marcus Eliezer, xiv, 146 blood libels: attempts to put an end to trials for, 196; Frankists’ accusations of, 106, 113–15, 117–18; Ganganeli’s commission/ report on, 98–99; in Poland, x, 94–97, 99, 101, 196, 312, 370, 552; and Poniatowski, 370; and Pope Clement XIV, 99–100, 266; torture of Jews for, 94–96, 100–101, 196; and Zelig’s appeals to Catholic leadership, 97–101, 117, 185 Blue Nile, search for source of, 188 Boaz, Shimon, 301 Boaz, Tuvia, 50, 277 Bock, Tobias, 155 Bodian, Miriam, 12 body tax, 360, 365, 396, 534 Bohemia: and burial practices dispute, 440–41; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 365, 367; Lehman’s travels to, 417; and military service of Jews, 454; peasant revolt in, 265, 267–68; restrictions imposed on Jews, 365–66, 513; treatment of peasants in, 261

596

I n de x

Bolichow, 183 Bonn, Germany, 393–94, 395 Bonn, Moshe, 31 books and the Jewish library, 347, 348, 369, 372. See also specific titles and authors Bordeaux, France, 281 Boston Massacre, 191 Boucher, François, 47 Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, 188 Bowles, John, 551 boxing matches, 432–33, 434–36 Braunschweig, Maximilian Julius Leopold von, 395–96 Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Wilhelm Ferdinand von, 261 Bregoli, Francesca, 310 Breslau, Mendel, 376, 438 Brill, Joel, 355 Brinckmann, Karl Gustav, 588 Broglie, Victor de, 464 Brothers, Richard, 510–11 Bruce, James, 188 Brühl, Heinrich von, 101 Buchbinder, Ya’aqov Ben Leib. See Frank, Jacob Bulgakov, Jacob, 572 burial practices, 230, 248–51, 440–41, 453, 530, 535–36 Burke, Edmund, 475–76, 477, 489, 548 Bushka, Zvi Hirsch, 550–51 butchers’ tension with slaughterers, 532 Butrymowicz, Matheusz, 452, 504, 505 Calas, Jean, 160–61 Calmer, Liefmann, 310 Calvinists, 396 Camerino, Abraham, 549 Candide (Voltaire), 52–55, 66 Capet, Louis, 481 Caroline Mathilda, Queen of Denmark, 186, 194, 195 Carosi, Johann Philip, 6 Carpi, Issachar H·aim, 559 Casanova, Giacomo, 47, 49–50, 54, 252–53, 301 Castle of Otranto (Walpole), 121 Catherine II, Empress of Russia: ascension to throne, 51; and Balsamo’s claims of

powers, 302; and casualties in war with Prussia, 196; death of, 510; and Frankists’ appeal, 182–83; and French Revolution, 480; and Hasidic movement, 237, 573; and humanism, 245; insurrection against, 265; and Jewish merchants, 309–10; and Jewish Question, 247; on Jews in White Russia, 246; memoirs of, 179; and Pale of Settlement, 246, 509; and Poland, 180, 230, 236, 241, 244–45, 506; and Poniatowski’s rule of Poland, 178–80; and Pugachev Rebellion, 268; religious freedom under regime of, 237; restrictions imposed on Jews, 510, 531; and rights of Jews, 245, 452; and Russo-Turkish War, 240, 398; and Voltaire, 161, 179; Wessely on, 370 Catholic Church: and barriers between Christians and Jews, 307–8; and birth control, 353; and blood libels, 95, 97, 98–101, 266; and Calas affair, 160–61; and conversion of Wolf, 419–20; and Counter-Reformation, 518; and death of Pope Clement XIV, 307; and French Revolution, 485–86; and Gordon’s conversion, 424; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 364–65; and Louis XVI’s edict of Calvinists, 396; in Poland, 503; subordination to the state, 364; and succession of Pope Pius VI, 307 centuries, periodization of history according to, xv “century of philosophy,” 390 Cerf Berr of Medelsheim, 310, 360, 475 Chabot, François, 487 charlatans, golden age of, 301–4 Charles, Jacques Alexandre, 391 Chassid, Michel, 147 Chateau-Thierry, Claude Antoine Capon de, 449, 451 Chelsea Gang, xiv, 213–15 Chernyshev, Zakhar Grigoryevich, 245, 309 children born out of wedlock, 211, 212 China, Jews in, 150 Chodowiecki, Daniel, 437 Christianeaum Gymnasium, 410, 412 Christianity and Christians: and Azulai’s travels, 80, 279, 280; barriers between

I n de x Jews and, 307–8; and boxing match of Mendoza vs. Humphreys, 432–33, 434–36; and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, 476; conversions of Jews to, 406–9, 418–22, 538, 585, 586; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 361; economic competition between Jews and, 9–10; and Emden’s doctrine of religious toleration, 108; and essay competition of Royal Society of Science and Arts of Metz, 448; Euchel on clergy of, 412–13; and flooding of 1784, 395; Frankists’ mass conversion to, 105–6; and French Revolution, 476, 480, 510; and Jew Bill in England, 89, 90, 94; and the Jewish question, 448; Jews married to, 326, 422; and Joseph II’s motives, 380; Kant on Jews’ adoption of, 527; and Lavater’s challenge, 207–8; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 315–17; and Maria Theresa’s zealotry, 307; Mendelssohn on, 188–89; and Mendelssohn’s introduction to Vindiciae judaeorum, 376; and Pombal’s post-earthquake leadership, 42; proselytization from, 207–8; and secularization trends, 353; tensions between Jews and, 140; theological interpretations of natural phenomena, 43, 394; and Unitarian Church, 433. See also blood libels Christian VII, King of Denmark and Norway, 186, 194, 370, 555 Church of Saint Margaret in Gotha, time capsule document in, 389, 396 citizenship and naturalization of Jews: discussions of, 345–46, 447; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 361; and enlightened absolutism, 503; in France, 93, 368–69, 458–67, 505; and French Revolution, 446–47, 475, 478–80, 485; Grégoire on, 449; and Jew Bill in England, 89–94; and Jewish modernization, 368–69; Mendelssohn’s plan for, 359; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 362, 381; and military service of Jews, 454; opposition to, 379; in Poland, 505; in Prussia, 513–14, 553–54; in Russia, 452; and women, 401

597

civil religion, 159 class divisions and status, 10–12, 13 Clement XIII, Pope, 99, 100, 101, 146 Clement XIV, Pope, 99, 266, 307 Clermont-Tonnerre, Stanislas, 464 clothing and fashion: adaptation in, 291, 328; allowing more freedom of movement, 353; of Azulai, 76; de Pinto on, 164; of Frankists, 425; Friedburg’s satires condemning, 328; of Gordon, 423; of Isaak, 291; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 453; and Metz regulations, 327; new styles of, 231; and Posner’s challenge to rabbinical authority, 356–57; in the United States, 275 coal mining, 354 Cohen, Benjamin, 401 Cohen, Moshe Gershon. See Anton, Karl Cohen, Raphael: Bushka as successor of, 551; and Dov Ber of Międzyrzecz, 222; as enemy of modernizers, 554–55; and Levin’s Besamim rosh, 536; Levin’s criticisms of, 441; and Maimon, 410; on men’s beards, 328, 356–57; and rabbinical authority, 322, 356–57; and Vilna Gaon’s imposters, 525 Cohen, Richard, 439, 449 coinage and mints, 56–57 Collingwood, Luke, 358 Cologne, 41, 393, 419 colonialism, 187–88 The Columns of the House of Judah (Horowitz), 209, 358 comets, 394 commandments, proposed cancellation of, 497–98 Common Sense (Paine), 354 Confessions (Rousseau), 45, 48 conscription, military, 453–56. See also military service of Jews conservatism, rise in ideology of, 549 conversions, religious: as act of political defiance, 424; of Christians to Judaism, 422–25; considered by Maimon, 410, 418; of Dorothea Veit, 586; of Frankists, 105–6, 113–14, 115–16, 118; of Gad, 585; of Jewish women in Berlin, 406–9, 418, 419;

598

I n de x

of Levin, 497; orphan children raised as Christians, 418; pressures to convert, 418; and religious tolerance, 408–9; of Rey, 538 Cook, James, 187–88, 189 Copenhagen, 28–29; communal autonomy of Jews in, 24; and Emden–Eybeschütz dispute, 28–29; Euchel in, 411–13; fire in, 531; Jewish merchants in, 193–94; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 325; Struensee’s reforms in, 194–95 Copenhagen, Shimon, 216, 218–19, 394 Corbet, Thomas, 565 Cordova, Joshua Hezekiah de, 138, 437 Cordovero, Moshe, 344 Cossack uprisings, 268 Costa, Emanuel Mendes Da, xiv, 149–51, 152, 301 cotton, 354 Council of Four Lands: and blood libels, 97–98, 101, 106; dissolution of, 184–85; and Emden, 32; excommunication of Frankists, 112; and Eybeschütz, 25; and Hasidic movement, 234; and Proops brothers’ dispute with competitors, 132 Council of Lithuania, 3, 8, 184 Cranz, August, 357, 376, 380 crimes and criminals, 135–37; and Australian prison colony, 404–5; and Chelsea Gang, 213–15; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 362; murders, 404, 534–35; and Old Bailey court records, London, England, 135–36; rape, 135–36; Simonds’s perjury, 135. See also executions The Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 352–53, 357 Crypto-Jews (Marranos), 42, 43, 165 Cumberland, Richard, 490–92, 498 Czartoryski, Adam Kazimierz, 301, 506 Czestochowa, 116, 182, 238, 304, 306, 571 Dacosta, David, 465 Da Costa, David Mendes, 55 d’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 46, 179 Damiens, Robert-François, 54, 62, 95 Dangeli, Vidal, 520 Danton, Georges, 487 Danzig, 96, 220, 412 Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 147–48

Darkhei no’am [The Paths of Pleasantness], 221 Darnton, Robert, 392 David, Moshe, 123 David, Yehoshua’ Ben, 284 David of Maków, 221, 222, 349, 571, 577 Davy, Charles, 40 deaf people and sign language, 79, 146, 552 death, theater of, 54, 95 The Decameron (Boccaccio), 315–16 The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (De Gouges), 478 De Gouges, Olympe, 478, 487 De la Barre, François-Jean Lefebvre, 197, 198 Dembowski, Mikola, 113 Denmark, 29, 31, 193–98, 357, 370, 412, 531 De Pinto, Isaac, xiv, 147, 163–66 Der Jude weekly publication, 328 Derzhavin, Gavril, 561 Desmoulins, Camille-Benoît, 487 De temperamentis (Gumpertz), 152 Diderot, Denis, 46, 147, 179, 188 Diner, Hasia, 139, 311 disasters and catastrophes: earthquake in Land of Israel (1759), 121; earthquake in Portugal (1756), 39–46, 73, 107, 111; flooding of 1784, 393, 394–95; theological/ supernatural interpretations of, 42–44, 60–61, 107, 394; tsunamis following earthquake, 40–41; volcano eruption in Iceland, 393; winter of 1783–84, 392–94 Discourse on Inequality (Rousseau), 48 Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (Rousseau), 48 Divorce of Kleve, 215–19 divorces, 6, 215–19, 410–11, 584, 588, 589–90 Divrei negidim [The Officers’ Words] (Hirsch), 517 Divrei shalom veemet [Words of Peace and Truth] (Wessely), 345, 366, 372, 373, 374, 376–77, 378, 474, 479 Dobruška, Moses Ben Zalman (later Franz Thomas von Schönfeld), 305, 421, 487–88 Dobruška, Sheindel, 306 Dobruška, Shlomo, 305 Döhla, Johann Conrad, 275 Dohm, Christian Wilhelm von, 359, 360–63, 368, 381, 506; Ueber die bürgerliche

I n de x Verbesserung der Juden [On the Civil Improvement of the Jews], 360–63, 379 Dov Ber of Ilintsy, 521 Dov Ber of Międzyrzecz, xiv; and Ba’al Shem Tov, 119–20, 222; death of, 236; and formation of Hasidism, 221; Magid devarav leya’aqov [He Tells His Words to Jacob], 344; Maimon’s pilgrimage to court of, 223; and Vilna Gaon’s attacks, 235 Dov Eskeles, Yissakhar, 12 Doyle, William, 549 Dresden, 56, 305, 314, 392 Dresden, Germany, 314, 392 Dubec, Lopez, 465 Dubin, Lois, 243 Dubno, Solomon, 155, 320 Dubnow, Simon, xii, 237, 297, 332, 441–42, 526 Duport, Adrien, 478 Dutch Republic, 399–401 earthquakes: in Land of Israel (1759), 121; in Portugal (1756), 39–46, 73, 107, 111 Eckhoffen, Hans von Ecker und, 421 education and schools: Atias’s advocacy for, 318; in Berlin, 323, 371, 377; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 362, 368; and elite women in Berlin, 406; Euchel’s calls for reform, 355–56, 412, 413, 438; failures of Jewish, 322, 373, 406–7, 508; and first modern Jewish school, 262; in France, 480; Freischule (modern schools), 57, 323, 371, 377, 406, 439, 441; Gad on gender discrimination in, 585; and German language literacy, 453; Itzig’s H·inukh Ne’arim (modern Jewish school) in Berlin, 57, 323, 332; and Joseph II’s policies, 365, 366, 367; Lefin’s plan for, 506; Levine’s proposals for reform of, 247–48; Maria Theresa’s reforms in, 309; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 322–23; opposition to new schools, 378; and rabbinical elite, 345, 367, 440; restrictions imposed on Jews, 513; Rousseau on, 159; traditional, 247, 322, 356, 367, 371, 373, 378, 440; in the United States, 139; Wessely on, 321–22, 345, 369–70, 371, 373, 374, 377, 438; and Wolfssohn’s Qalut da’at vetsevi’ut, 495

599

The Education of the Human Race (Lessing), 317 Egypt, 547, 548, 564–67 Eidlitz, Zerakh, 211 Eliezer, Isaac, 140 Eliezer, Israel Ben. See Ba’al Shem Tov Elimelech of Leżajsk, 222, 442, 522 Elyakim Ben Abraham, xi, 511 emancipation of Jews: and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 368; in France, x, 451; in Russia, 309–10, 452. See also citizenship and naturalization of Jews Emden, Jacob, xiv; ‘Aqitsat ‘aqrav, 31; and burial practices dispute, 250–51, 260; death of, 263; and dispute in Lwow, 118; and Divorce of Kleve, 217, 219; and doctrine of religious toleration, 108; escape from Altona, 23–24; Ethics of the Fathers, 143; excommunication of, 22, 24, 26; and Eybeschütz, Jonathan’s death, 129; Eybeschütz, Jonathan’s dispute with, 4, 14–22, 24–32, 75, 78, 98, 105, 129; and Eybeschütz, Wolf, 123, 124, 129; on Falk, 121–22, 302; and Frankists’ appeal to Russia, 182; and Frankist scandal, 106–8, 112, 117; health issues of, 130; on illicit behaviors, 211; on Maimonides, 143, 144; Megilat sefer, 129; and Mendelssohn, 144, 250–51, 260, 263; and rabbinical authority, 250–51, 260, 262; and religious tolerance, 108, 260; Resen mat’e, 107; response to humanism trends, 262–63; return to Altona, 28; and Sabbateanism, 107–8, 129, 262; Sefer hitavqut [Book of Struggles], 122; Sefer shimush, 130; on wealthy elite, 143 Emile (Rousseau), 158, 159, 167, 440 Encyclopédie (Diderot and d’Alembert), 46–47 Endeavour (ship), 187–88 Endelman, Todd, 213, 252 England and Great Britain: attitudes toward Jews in, 381; clothing and fashion in, 353; and Cumberland’s The Jew, 490–92; and Diplomatic Revolution, 50; and emigration to North America, 137; and French Revolution, 489; and Gordon Riots, 265, 270; Gordon’s reproach of Jews in, 425;

600

I n de x

Irish republicans’ rebellion against, 547; and Jew Bill, xiii, 88–94, 464, 516; language skills of Jews in, 371; monarchy of, 549–50; and Napoleonic Wars, 547; and Paine’s radical writings, 265; and Partition of Poland, 239; and Plantation Act (1740), 89, 93, 140; religious tolerance in, 370, 390; and Seven Years’ War, 50–53, 58, 60; and steam engines, 353–54; taxation of colonies in North America, 190–91, 192; and Wilkes Riots, 270 English Letters (Voltaire), 161–62 Enlightenment: advancement of, 389; apprehension/condemnation of, 527–28; and beliefs in magic/supernatural, x, 121, 552; and blood libels in Poland, 96; and burial practices, 249; and counterEnlightenment responses, 46; and Goya’s Los Caprichos, 546; and Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 549; and Horowitz’s Sefer habrit, 527–28, 529; and Jeitteles’ satirical allegory, 557–58; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 365; Kant on, 390–91, 413; and Mendelssohn, 391, 397, 547; and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, 489–90; optimism of the times, 45, 391; and Romanelli’s travels in Morocco, 414; and Seven Years’ War, 120–21; and spirit of rebellion, 266, 267; tension between romanticism and, 549. See also Jewish Enlightenment Ensheim, Moses, 450, 463, 482–83 Ephraim, Veitel Heine, 9, 56–57, 408 epidemics, 552 equality and equal rights: Butrymowicz on, 504; and Declaration of Independence, 261; Dohm on, 361–62; Gordon’s expectation for, 503; and Mendelssohn’s introduction to Vindiciae judaeorum, 375; in the United States, 512 Equiano, Olaudah, 398 Ernst und Falk (Lessing), 302 essay competition of Royal Society of Science and Arts of Metz, 448–51 Essay on Science (Gumpertz), 152 Essay on the Physical and Moral Regeneration of the Jews (Grégoire), 449

Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (Maimon), 175 Esther (Händel), 134–35 Ethics of the Fathers (Emden), 143 Ethiopian Jews, 188 Etkes, Immanuel, 232, 522 Ets h·ayim [Tree of Life] (Vital), 379–80 Etwas zur Charackteristick der Juden [Something About the Characteristics of Judaism] (Bendavid), 497 Euchel, Isaac, xiv; on breakthrough in France, 474; on Christian clergy, 412–13; and collapse of Haskalah movement, 552–53; on cultural revolution, 376; and educational reforms, 355–56, 412, 413, 438; and Emden’s criticisms of Mendelssohn, 251; and French Revolution, 498; and Haskalah movement, 439; and Jewish Enlightenment, 412; and Maimon, 411, 529; and Maskilim, 412, 413; on Mendelssohn’s death, 438; on Mendelssohn’s impact, 312; and Mendelssohn’s Qohelet musar, 155, 156; Nah�al habesor [The Herald Spring], 372, 376, 377; Reb Henoch, oder: Woss tut me damit? [Rabbi Henoch, or What Can One Do with This?], 495–96, 498; Sefat emet [The Language of Truth], 356; travels of, 411–13; and Wessely’s patriotic prayer, 194. See also Haskalah movement Euclid (Schick), 325 Euler, Leonhard, 152 executions: for attempted assassination, 95; for blood libels, 94–96, 100–101; cruelty exercised in, 54, 94, 95, 96, 196, 197; of de la Barre, 197, 198; and judicial murders, 94, 95, 96–97, 106, 197, 357; for murder, 404, 534–35; for perjury, 135; for rape, 135–36. See also torture An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (Wright), 187 Eybenberg, Mariana von, 407–8 Eybeschütz, Jonathan, xiv; accused of Sabbateanism, 4–5, 14, 15, 20, 24–25, 26, 29, 78; autobiography of, 21; death of, 129; Emden’s dispute with, 4, 14–22, 24–32, 75, 78, 98, 105, 129; and executions for

I n de x blood libels in Poland, 96; and Frankist scandal, 106–7; and Geldern’s travels, 83; Kreti ufleti, 21; and rabbinate of Metz, 21; restoration to power, 31–32; and Seven Years’ War, 39; supporters of, 19, 23, 24, 26–27, 30 Eybeschütz, Wolf, 32–33, 120, 123–24, 129, 304–6 Fabre, Jean Antoine, 279 Falk, Joshua, 19, 26, 31, 78, 79, 83 Falk, Samuel, 120–24, 301–2 family names, 453 Fare, Louis Henri de La, 464 Farh� i, H·aim, 283 The Fashionable Lover (Cumberland), 490 Faust (Goethe), 490 Faustin or the Century of Philosophy (Pezzl), 390 Feivel Ben Moshe of Kolin, 402 Felix Libertate [Happy in Liberty], 514, 516, 517 Ferdinand, Prince, 55 Ferrari, Pierre Marie de, 520 feudalism, 190, 247, 308–9, 549 Fielding, John, 213 Fleckeles, Elazar, 437, 555–56 flooding of 1784, 393, 394–95 Florentin (Dorothea Veit), 586–88 food consumption trends, 354 Formiggini, Moses, 519 Foucault, Michel, 95, 196 Four Stages of Cruelty (Hogarth), 47 France: Azulai’s travels in, 79–80, 280, 282; Berr’s calls for reforms in, 360; body tax in, 360, 365, 396; citizenship of Jews in, 93, 368–69, 458–67, 475, 478–79, 505; clothing and fashion in, 353; and deaths of Voltaire and Rousseau, 263–64; and Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, 462, 464; economic crisis in, 354–55, 396; emancipation of Jews in, x, 451; and essay competition of Royal Society of Science and Arts of Metz, 448–51; French Academy of Sciences, 80; Geldern’s travels in, 73–74; and hot air balloons, 391–92; and Jew Bill in England,

601

464; Marie Antoinette’s marriage to Louis XVI, 186–87; military service of Jews in, 474; Napoleon appointed First Consul in, 548; Napoleonic era of, 558–59; and Napoleonic Wars, 518–21, 547, 548–49; and Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, 564–67; and Partition of Poland, 239; political recognition to Jews of Bordeaux, 474revolution in, 390 (see also French Revolution); and Seven Years’ War, 39, 50–53; status of Jews in, 446–47, 516, 563; Turgot’s reforms in, 268–69; war with Austria, 480, 513. See also Louis XV, King of France; Louis XVI, King of France Fränckel, Israel, 59 Frank, Eve, 425 Frank, Isaac, 211 Frank, Jacob, xiv; autobiography of, 110; background of, 109–11; death of, 488; Emden on, 109–10; end-of-days prophecy of, 238, 557; and Frankists’ appeal to Russia, 182–83; image as sorcerer, 106; imprisonment of, 116; name change of, 111; and Partition of Poland, 238; release from prison, 238; religious conversions of, 111, 113, 116, 307; and Sabbateans, 110; as second Jacob of the Bible, 109; title of nobility sought by, 304, 306 Frank, Jacob Elihu, xiv, 561–62 Fränkel, David, 62–64, 82–83 Fränkel, Judith, 557 Frankfurt, 17, 19, 26, 31, 65, 78, 83, 133–34, 146, 152, 190, 199–200, 217–19, 273, 299, 320, 329, 372, 378, 395, 401–2, 404, 425, 441, 448, 521, 532, 535, 537, 589 Frankists: and Ba’al Shem Tov, 118, 119, 125; blood libel accusations made by, 106, 113– 15, 117–18; and burning of the Talmud, 106, 113, 118; conversion to Greek Orthodoxy (proposed), 182–83; and Dembowski’s theological dispute, 113; and dispute in Lwow, 113–17, 118; Emden on threat of, 106–8, 112, 117; excommunications of, 106, 112, 557; Fleckeles’ struggles against, 555– 56, 557; and French Revolution, 487–88; and Jeitteles’ satirical allegory, 557–58; libertinism practiced by, 111–12, 117; mass

602

I n de x

conversion to Christianity, 105–6, 113–14, 115–16, 118; and Partition of Poland, 238; in Poland, 105–18, 123; and Russia, 182–83; women’s status in, 112, 117 Franklin, Benjamin, 189–90, 391–92 Franks, David, 138 Franz I, Holy Roman Emperor, 133 Franz II, Emperor of Austria, 481, 513, 576 Frederiki, Karl Ludwig, 249 Frederik VI, King of Denmark, 412, 413 Fredrick V, King of Denmark, 24, 28, 31 freedom of expression in the press, 194 freedom of speech, 192 Freemasons, 301, 302, 305, 420–21, 490 Freischule (modern school), 57, 323, 371, 377, 406, 439, 441. See also education and schools French Association of Friends of Liberty and Equality, 563 French Revolution: and Ashkenazi Jews, 478–79; beginning of, 396; and British public, 489; and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, 475–76; Carpi’s support of, 559; and Christian Church, 476, 480, 510; and citizenship of Jews, 446–47, 475, 478–80, 485; and Committee on Public Safety, 485; and counterrevolution, 487; and Cult of Reason, 489; and economic crisis of France, 354–55; executions of monarchy, 480, 481–82; and Frankists, 487–88; and Gordon, 476–77; and Holland’s emancipation of Jews, 515; and Law of Suspects, 485; and Maimon, 177; and Maskilim, 505; and military service of Jews, 482, 483–84; and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, 490; and persecution of religion, 479–80, 485–87, 489; and political loyalties of Jews, 482–83; and Reign of Terror, 479, 484–85, 488–89; Rey’s criticisms of, 538, 539; and Sephardi Jews of Bordeaux, 462, 475; theological interpretations of, xi, 511; Trebitsch on impact of, 480–82, 484–85, 488–89 Frey, Emanuel, 487, 488 Frey, Junius, 487–88

Friedburg, Samson, 327–28 Friedländer, David, 323, 374, 513, 514, 530, 553–54 Friedlander, Michael, 412 Friedrich Augustus I, King of Saxony, 305 Friedrich I, King of Prussia, 312 Friedrich II, King of Prussia: death of, 397; and Geldern’s travels, 84; and General Privilege (1750), 3, 9–12, 65, 90, 154, 242, 299; and Jewish Question, 247; and Kant, 390, 397; and Kisch’s dissertation, 147; and Maria Theresa, 51, 264, 265; and Mendelssohn, 391; and Partition of Poland, 239–40, 241; policy toward Jewish minority, 242; Political Testament of 1752, 10; and religious tolerance, 370; rule of, 265; and Russia’s power, 240; and Seven Years’ War, 61, 62, 65; and Voltaire, 10, 49, 52 Friedrichsfeld, David, 514, 516 Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, 397, 409, 483, 506, 509, 513, 514 Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia, 550–51 Friendly Address to the Jews (pamphlet), 105 Frizel, Ivan Grigorievich, 561 Fulda, Avraham, 401–2 Gad-Bernard, Esther, 584–85, 589 Galicia: Hasidic movement in, x, 442–43, 522; and Jew Edict of Maria Theresa, 309; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 367, 452–53; and military service of Jews, 454, 455–56; and Partition of Poland, 239, 240, 241, 242–43, 244; and settlements for Jews, 453 Galiko, Israel, 366 Galinsky, Jacob, 306 Ganganeli, Lorenzo, 98, 99, 100, 101 Ganz, David, 177 Gardiner, Sara, 326 Garrick, David, 51 Gazzetta Veneta Urbana, 520 Gedalia Ben Yitsh� aq Halevi, 124–25 Gedike, Friedrich, 422 Geldern, Simon/Shimon van/von, xiv, 72, 73–74, 80–85, 89, 301, 302–3, 450

I n de x General Privilege decree of Friedrich II, 3, 9–12, 65, 90, 154, 242, 299 General Regulations for the Jews of Moravia, 12 Geneva, 49, 52, 84, 158 “The Genius of the Nineteenth Century” (Hennings), ix–x George II, King of Great Britain, 42, 55, 90, 93 George III, King of Great Britain, 135, 191, 192, 261, 354 German language, 365, 453 Germany: Azulai’s travels in, 77–78; burial practices in, 248–51; clash with Polish authorities, 132–33; crimes and criminals in, 362; education reform in, 355–56; emancipation of Jews in, 368; emigration from, 137, 213; rabbinical authority challenged in, 356–57; religious tolerance in, 370; restrictions imposed on Jews, 447–48; threat of expulsion in, 314; women from Jewish bourgeoisie in, 406–7, 584. See also Berlin, Germany Gershon of Kitov, 350 Gerson, Hartog Hirsch, 194–95 Gibraltar, 414, 538 Gideon, Samson, 55–56, 91, 92–93 Gierszeniowna, Rivka, 7 Gin Lane (Hogarth), 47 Giv’at hamore [The Guide’s Hill] (Maimon), 528–29 Glikl of Hamel, 589–90 Glyn, Lynn, 151 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: and Braunschweig’s death, 395; on changing attitudes toward Jews, 206; and coronation of Joseph II, 199; and earthquake in Portugal, 45–46; and elite women in Berlin, 406; Faust, 490; and French Revolution, 480; and Maimon, 530; and restrictions imposed on Jews, 200; and Seven Years’ War, 190; The Sorrows of Young Werther, 265–66, 353 Goldberg, Jacob, 505 Göldi, Anna, 357 Gonta, Ivan, 193 Gordon, George, Lord: conversion to Judaism, 422–25; death of, 425; and

603

Falk, 301; and Gordon Riots, 265, 270, 423; imprisonment of, 455, 476–77; and Joseph II’s policies, 455; and Mendoza vs. Humphreys boxing match, 433, 435–36; on non-observant Jews, 425, 436; on Poland, 506; and political turmoil in Europe, 503; protest in Parliament, 270 Gordon, Yekutiel, 120, 124–25, 324–25 Gotha, 389, 396 Goya, Francisco, 546–47, 549 Graanboom, Isaac Ben Abraham, 517–18 Gradis, Abraham, 281 Gradis, Benjamin, 281 Gradis, David, 465 Gratz, Bernard, 272 Gratz, Michael, 138, 272 Great Britain. See England and Great Britain Great Synagogue of the Ashkenazi community in London, 60 Green, Arthur, 567 Grego, Isaac, 520 Grégoire, Henri Jean-Baptiste, 449–50, 460, 463, 478 Gries, Zeev, 348 Guenée, Antoine, 166 Guggenheim (Mendelssohn), Fromet, 64–65, 157, 296–97 Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 529 Gumpertz, Aaron, 152–54 Gumpertz, Itzig, 56, 57 Gumpertz, Moshe, 3, 9 Gunzhausen, Leah, 215–19 Gustav III, King of Sweden, 293, 294, 370, 481 Hacohen, Elijah, 379 Hacohen, Ishmael, 378, 519–20 Hacohen, Shalom, 552 Hadik, Andras, 454 Haephrati of Troplowitz, Joseph, 492–93, 498 Hagiz, Moses, 75 H·aim, Shmuel, 76 H·aim Hillel Ben Sasson, 234 Halakha, 312 Halevi, Judah, 358–59 Halle, 11, 146, 536

604

I n de x

Hamburg: and Cohen’s conservative worldview, 328, 555; crime in, 535–36; education reform in, 355; Emden– Eybeschütz dispute, 4, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27–28, 30, 31–32; and Eybeschütz, Wolf, 120; Friedburg on Jewish community of, 327–28; Maimon in, 410; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 322; Posner’s persecution in, 356–57, 368, 374, 375–76 Hamburger, Mordecai, 217 Hameasef (periodical): and Braunschweig’s death, 395; and burial practices dispute, 440–41; closure of, 552; content of, 440; on education, 440; and Emden’s criticisms of Mendelssohn, 251; Euchel as editor of, 155, 412; on French citizenship, 475; and French Revolution, 460–61, 463, 483; on Friedrich II’s death, 397; and Haskalah movement, 438; on Holland’s emancipation of Jews, 514; inauguration of, 376; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 453; Maimon’s article in, 411; on Mendelssohn’s death, 438; and military service of Jews, 455–56; on religious tolerance, 397. See also Haskalah movement Hancock, John, 191 Hannah (beggar), 583, 584, 590 happiness: aspirations for, xiii, 47, 417–18; conversions in hopes for, 419; and Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit, 588, 589, 590; Encyclopédie on right to, 46–47; and humanistic trends, 261; Kant on, 357 Hart, Isaac, 272 Hasidim and Hasidic movement: accused of libertinism, 571, 572; authority of leaders in, 222–23; and Ba’al Shem Tov, 119–20; books published by Shlomo of Łuck, 347, 348; campaigns against, 230, 231–37, 344, 346–50, 441–46, 571, 576–77; and Catherine’s regime in Russia, 237; courts of, 521–22; Dubnow’s criticisms of, 441–42; and emigration to Land of Israel, 282–86; eroticism/sexuality associated with, 349, 523; excommunications of, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 241, 343, 344, 346,

444; expansion/strengthening of, x, xiii, 223, 379, 521–22; formation of movement, 221; historical significance of, 577; identity as a movement, 222, 236, 344, 345; and Kabbalah, 344; and Katzenellenbogen’s dispute, 347–48, 350; Lefin’s criticisms of, 506; and letter of denunciation, 285–86; Maimon on, 223–25; and Margolioth, 330; and Mitnagdim, 232, 236, 344, 346, 349–50, 379, 441–42, 524–26, 570–75, 577; persecution of, 343; in Poland, 224, 225, 230, 236–37, 343, 506; and rabbinical establishment, 223, 230, 234, 236–37, 331, 343, 349, 573; and religious awakening, 119, 221–22, 225, 232, 348, 521–23, 577; as religious liberation movement, 573; and Sabbateanism, 120, 234; sanctions/ polemics against, 235, 346–47; Schick’s criticisms of, 325; and science, 325; Shneur Zalman of Lyadi’s defense of, 232, 443– 44; and Shneur Zalman of Lyadi’s Tanya, 523–24; on Torah scholars, 343; and Tsavat haribash [The Testament of Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem], 523; and Vilna Gaon, 225, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 346–47, 442; and Vilna Gaon’s death, 526; in White Russia, x, 232, 241; women’s status with, 401, 523; and Ya’aqov Yosef of Polnoye’s Toldot ya’aqov yosef, 262, 331, 343, 347. See also Ba’al Shem Tov Haskalah movement: activists of (see Maskilim); books on history of, 372; collapse of, 496, 552–53; concern about “false Haskalah,” 496; and cultural renewal, 438; and educational reforms, 438; emergence of, 208–9, 345; and Euchel’s Reb Henoch, oder: Woss tut me damit? [Rabbi Henoch, or What Can One Do with This?], 495–96; expansion/ strengthening of, 439; founder (see Euchel, Isaac); and Horowitz’s condemnation of, 527–28; and Maimon, 529, 530; and Margolioth, 379; periodical of (see Hameasef); publishing house of, 439–40; and rationalism, 556; Society for the Promotion of the Good and the Noble, 439; Society for the Promotion of the

I n de x Hebrew Language, 412, 438, 439; and Wessely’s Divrei shalom veemet, 373, 374. See also Hameasef Haufsinger, Jonah, 556 H·ayim, maggid in Vilna, 233 Hayim of Lublin, 22, 25 Hays, Moses Michael, 272 Hebrew language and culture: and acculturation, 552; in Ashkenazi communities, 371; declining interest in, 320, 552–53; and Haephrati’s Melukhat shaul, 492–93; Maskilim’s attempts to renew, 345; scientific knowledge conveyed in, 210; in Sephardi communities, 371. See also Haskalah movement Hebron, 73, 74, 75, 77, 270, 273, 276 Hecksher, Mordecai, 28 Heidelberg, 393 Heidenheim of Offenbach, Wolf, 441 Heilbot, Arieh, 22, 23 Heine, Heinrich, xi, 85 Hell, François, 360 Hennings, August Adolph von, ix–x, 381 Herder, Gottfried, 265 heroes: emerging from natural catastrophes, 395–96; Mendoza’s heroic self-image, 435 Herz, Henriette, xiv, 252, 406, 407, 584 Herz, Marcus, 175, 297, 407, 440–41, 514 Herz of Berlin, Naphtali, 378 Heschel, Joshua, 25, 132 Hess of Paris, Shlomo, 487 H·evrat dorshei leshon ‘ever [The Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language], 376. See also Haskalah movement H·evrat H·inukh Ne’arim [Society for the Education of Youth] school in Berlin, 323, 379 Heydeck, Joseph, 419 Hillel Ben Yitsh� aq Kirimi , 284 Hillman, Samuel, 19, 25–26 Hillman, Shmuel, 83 Hirsch, Tsevi, 82–83 Hirschfeld, Ephraim Joseph, 420–21 Hirschl, Abraham, 162 Hirschl of Breslau, Moshe, 437 Hirsh, Tsevi, 122 Hirsh Ben David, 572

605

Hirshel, Sheindel, 305 Høegh-Guldberg, Ove, 195 Hogarth, William, 47, 92, 146, 157 Holland: Ashkenazi community in, 515, 516, 560; Azulai’s travels in, 276, 279, 282; emancipation/citizenship of Jews in, 514–17, 560; emigration from, 137, 213; modernization in, 553; religious permissiveness in, 282; religious tolerance/freedom in, 282, 370, 515; Sephardi community in, 370, 516 Holmes, Richard, 391 Homberg, Herz, 440 Hönig, Israel, 555 Hönigsberg, Leib Enoch von, 555, 556, 558 Horchheim, Simon, 486 Horowitz, Jacob Isaac, 332, 522 Horowitz, Judah, 209, 211, 358 Horowitz, Leah, 405–6 Horowitz, Pinh� as Eliahu, 43, 527–29 Horowitz of Frankfurt, Pinchas Halevi, 329, 369, 378 hostility toward Jews: Dorothea Mendelssohn’s experience with, 586; in England, 381; and French Revolution, 460; in Italy, 548–49; and Jewish criminals, 214–15; in Kakhovskii’s report, 246; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 318; of Maria Theresa, 243, 307, 318; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 362–63; in Poland, 452, 503–4; in Russia, 561; in the United States, 512 hot air balloons, xiii, 210, 354, 391–92, 488–89 Hourwitz, Zalkind, xiv, 450–51, 466 humanism: among young leaders in Europe, 186; and Azulai’s travels, 80; and Black people, 359; and burial practices, 249; and Catherine the Great, 245; demands for adoption of, 308; and Emden, 109, 262–63; and emigration proposals, 448; and empathy for human suffering, 44, 46; and Ganganeli’s commission/report, 99; general trends in, 261–62; and Grégoire’s treatise, 449; and heroes emerging from natural catastrophes, 395, 396; and Jewish Enlightenment, 474; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 317; and Mendelssohn,

606

I n de x

55, 63, 154–55, 260, 261, 262, 376, 380; and Mendelssohn’s On Sentiments, 54, 156; and Mendelssohn’s Sermon on Peace, 167; and Rousseau’s Emile, 159; and rulers of German states, 153; and torture, 196–97; and Voltaire, 52, 53, 162, 166, 197 human rights, 314, 359 Humboldt, Alexander von, 406, 407–8 Humboldt, Wilhelm, 406, 407 Hume, David, 147, 239 Humphreys, Richard, 432–33, 434–36 Hundert, Gershon, 6, 7, 95, 331, 577 Hungary, 367, 454, 456 Hunt, Lynn, 314 Hunt, Margaret, 401 Hyman, Paula, 462 Igeret qodesh [The Holy Epistle] (Shneur Zalman), 527 Illuminati, 224–25 individualism: and Dorothea Mendelssohn/ Veit, 589; embrace of, at end of century, 590; and Emden’s dispute with Eybeschütz, 14; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 317; of Maimon, 529–30 industrialization, 354 infant mortality, 15, 552 Innsbruck, 75, 421 Inquisition, 40, 42, 43–44, 137 integration of the Jewish minority, 310. See also acculturation/assimilation intellectuals: Atias on failures of, 318–19; criticisms of religion, x; growing presence of, 211Jewish, 145–48 (see also Maimon, Solomon; Mendelssohn, Moses); and Republic of Letters, 145, 151, 157, 176, 207, 355, 376, 584 internal reform, project of, 318 Irish republicans’ rebellion against England, 547 Isaac, Daniel, 214 Isaac, David, 3 Isaac Israeli ben Joseph, 324 Isaack, Rivka and Bleimchen, 408–9 Isaak, Aaron, xiv, 291–94, 332 Isaiah of Janow, 523 Israel, Jonathan, 44

Israel, Land of: difficulties in settling, 285; earthquake in (1759), 121; and French Revolution, 510; Jews immigrating to, 282–86; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 362, 363; and Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, 564–67; Vilna Gaon’s attempted travel to, 295 Issachar Ber, Israel Ben, 230–31, 253–55 Issachar Ber Gratz, 138 Issar, imprisonment of, 231, 233 Isserles, Moses, 443 Istanbul, 29, 75, 78, 80, 131, 222, 282, 284, 304, 425, 565, 568–69 Italy: Azulai’s travels in, 282; emancipation/ citizenship of Jews in, 518–21, 559; Geldern’s travels in, 83; ghettoes abolished in, 308, 559; Jewish property owners in, 310; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 367; language skills of Jews in, 371; military service of Jews in, 519–20; and Napoleonic France, 518, 519, 521, 547, 559; orphan children raised as Christians in, 418; religious freedom in, 282; violence against Jews in, 548–49; and Wessely’s Divrei shalom veemet, 374, 378 Itzig, Daniel, 56, 319, 323, 513, 514 Itzig family, 9, 319, 323, 439, 513–14 Izmir, 82, 165, 166 Jacobin Club of Saint Esprit, 486 Jaffa, 548, 568 Jaski, Abraham, 32 Jaucourt, Louis de, 41 Jay, John, 311 Jefferson, Thomas, 265, 311, 399 Jeitteles, Baruch, 557–58 Jenner, Edward, 552 Jerusalem: accusations of reestablishment of, in Europe, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93; and Azulai’s travels, 72, 89; beards worn by men in, 425; Book of Daniel on rebuilding of, 106; and Ethiopian Jews, 188; and Geldern’s travels, 72, 89; immigration to, 282–83; and Jewish identity, 72; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 316; and Mendelssohn, 72; and Revolutionary France, 564, 565–66 Jerusalem (Mendelssohn), 363, 381, 409, 438

I n de x Jeshuat Israel synagogue, Rhode Island, 139–40 Jesuits, 42, 266 The Jew (Cumberland), 490–92 Jew Bill, 88–94; backlash against, 88, 90–93; controversy over, xiii; discussions of, outside of England, 153; Gumpertz’s pamphlet on, 153–54; and Jews in North America, 140; limited/restricted intentions of, 89–90; passage of, 90; as precedent for other countries, 516; revocation of, 93 Jew Edict (Judenordnung) of Maria Theresa, 309 Jewish Enlightenment: and Euchel, 412; and Frankists, 556; Friedrich II’s impact on, 397; and Haskalah movement, 474; and Mendelssohn’s Qohelet musar, 158; and Wessely, 374 Jewish Law on Inheritance, Guardianship, Wills, Marriage and Divorce, 312 Jewish Poor House, 11 Jewish Question: and emigration proposals, 448; and French law of citizenship, 478– 79; and Jewish plans to return to Land of Israel, 565; and Partition of Poland, 246–47; in Poland, 504–5; in Russia, 560; state sponsored discussions of, 451 The Jews (Lessing), 154–55, 315, 362 José I, King, 40 Joselewicz, Dov Ber (Berek), xiv, 507–8, 586 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, x; abolition of serfdom, 267; ascension to throne, 264–65; and conditions of peasants, 267; coronation of, 199; death of, 481; and Eybeschütz’s noble title, 304, 305–6; and Frank’s nobility aspirations, 304, 306; Gordon’s criticisms of treatment of Jews, 424; and Jewish Question, 247; and Jews of Galicia, 244; Landau on, 199–200, 265; and Lefin’s proposed reforms, 506; and Louis XVI’s procreation challenges, 269; and military service of Jews, 454, 466, 482; and Partition of Poland, 239, 241, 243; “Pastoral Letter” on achievements, 389–90; policies/edicts of toleration, xiii, 261, 307, 316, 345, 363–68, 369, 373, 397,

607

466, 512–13, 516; reforms initiated by, 265, 345, 369, 371 Jozefowicz of Chelm, Herschel, 505 judicial murders, 94, 95, 96–97, 106, 197, 357. See also executions Juliana Maria of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel, 29 Kabbalah and Kabbalists: and Azulai’s travels, 279; books of, 379–80; common curiosity about, 301; and Hasidism, 344; and Horowitz’s The Columns of the House of Judah, 209; and Sabbateanism, 262; in Schick’s conception of science, 324; and struggle against Frankists, 234; and Vilna Gaon, 232–33 Kahal, 220, 231, 329, 445–46, 466 Kaidanover, Zvi Hirsch, 379 Kakhovskii, Michael, 246 Kalckreuth, Adolf, 530 Kalisk, Abraham, 526–27, 528 Kamieniec, 106, 113, 114, 118 Kampe, Joachim, 585 Kann, Ber Leib Yitsh� aq, 133 Kann family, 133 Kant, Immanuel: on age of criticism, 352–53, 364; and changing attitudes toward Jews, 206; on citizenship, 483; The Critique of Pure Reason, 352–53, 357; on desire for happiness, 357; and elite women in Berlin, 407; on Enlightenment, 390–91, 413; and Euchel, 356; and Frankists, 556; and Friedrich II, 390, 397; and Horowitz’s Sefer habrit, 528; on Jews’ adoption of Christianity, 527; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 318; and Maimon, 175; and Mendelssohn, 157, 206, 296, 297–98, 318, 439; Perpetual Peace, 483; on reason, 352–53, 390; on war, 483 Kaplan, Yosef, 164, 212, 253 Karaite (Joseph Kusdini of Chufut-Kale), 283 Karigal, Raphael Chaim Isaac, xiv, 270, 273–75 Karl I, Duke of Braunschweig, 84 Kasevitsch, Moshe, 22–23 Katz, Jacob, 7, 322, 368, 408, 421, 555

608

I n de x

Katzenellbogen, Pinch� as, 130–31 Katzenellenbogen, Abraham, 347–48, 350 Katzenellenbogen, Jacob, 536 Kaunitz, Wenzel Anton von, 51 Keyserling, Hermann Karl von, 179–80 Kimh� i, Ya’aqov, 131 Kisch, Abraham, 147 Klier, John, 181, 245–46 Königsberg, 181, 208, 220, 295, 296, 297–99, 312, 320, 355–56, 372, 376, 395, 397, 411, 412, 413, 420, 438, 439, 513, 589 Königsberger, David, 505 Kościuszko, Tadeusz, 507–8 Kranz, August, 374 Kreti ufleti (Eybeschütz), 21 Krysa, Judah Leib, 111, 113, 114, 115–16 Kulp, David Meir, 133 Kulp, Zissel, 199 Kulp family, 133 Kusdini, 283–84 Kutuzov, Michael, 574 Kypke, Georg David, 312 La guerta de oro [The Golden Garden] (Atias), 318–19 Laki, Iceland (volcano eruption), 393 Landau, Ezekiel: and burial practices dispute, 440; and Divorce of Kleve, 217, 218; and Eybeschütz, 29; Haephrati’s elegy for, 493; and Joseph II’s coronation, 199– 200; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 367–68; and Maria Theresa’s eulogy, 264– 65; on marriages to non-Jewish people, 326; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 320; and military service of Jews, 456; and revolt of Bohemian peasants, 267–68; and Russo-Turkish War, 398; and Seven Years’ War, 39, 58, 59, 62; on sexual delinquency of Torah scholar, 212–13; and Wolf Eybeschütz, 33; on women as transgressors, 402 Landau, Jacob/Jacovka, 512–13 Landau, Samuel, 557 Lavater, Johann Kasper, 207–8, 313–14, 376 Lazarus, Isaac, 326 Lazarus, Shlomo, 214 Lefin, Menachem Mendel, 505–6

Lehman, Asher, 416–18, 455 Lehman, Josel, 483–84, 486 Lehman, Matthias, 275 Lehmann, Brand, 319–20 Leib, Nechemia Judah, 534 Leibl, Israel, 575–76, 577 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 48, 156, 439 Leipzig, 56, 206 Leizerovitch, Yankel, 330 Lémon, Hartog de, 516 Lemos, Henriette de. See Herz, Henriette Leonard, Harmanus, 516 Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, 269, 481, 509, 512 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim: and citizenship of Jews, 89; The Education of the Human Race, 317; Ernst und Falk, 302; and Gumpertz, 153, 154; The Jews play, 154–55, 315, 362; and Mendelssohn, 145, 381; Nathan the Wise, 262, 314–18, 359, 361, 449; and Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, 48; and Seven Years’ War, 66; and Struensee’s execution, 195–96 “Lettre d’un Citoyen” [“Letter of a Citizen”] (Berr), 479 Levi, Abraham, 278 Levi, David, 433, 511 Levi, Eliahu, 415 Levi, Feist, 327 Levi, Hirsch, 589 Levi, Leah, 252–53 Levi, Meuschel, 403 Levi, Michael, 135–36 Levi, Moshe, 419 Levi, Perle, 327 Levi, Raphael, 355 Levi, Samuel, 406, 530 Levi, Sara, 406 Levin, Rahel, 406, 584 Levin, Shaul, 321, 441, 536, 539 Levin, Zevi Hirsch, 60–61, 62, 131, 311, 372–73, 461 Levine, Josef, 230, 247–48 Levin of Amdur, Chaim Chaykl, 522 Levison, Mordecai (George) Gumpel Schnaber, 187, 210–11, 230 Liberles, Robert, 361

I n de x liberty and freedom: and Azulai’s travels, 280, 282; Dorothea Mendelssohn’s experience with, 589, 590; Friedländer on potential of, 553; and humanistic trends, 261; and Israel Ben Issachar Ber’s ‘Olam h�adash, 231; Mendelssohn’s expectations for, 359; and Rousseau’s The Social Contract, 158; and Schiller’s The Robbers, 351; and Shneur Zalman’s Tanya, 524; in the United States, 512 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 303–4 Lifschitz, Israel, 216–17, 218, 219 Lifschitz, Moshe Tsevi, 148–49 Linda, Baruch, 358 Liqueti amarim [Collected Sayings; also known as Tanya] (Shneur Zalman), 523–24, 526 Lisa, Abraham, 217 Lisbon, Portugal, 40–41, 43 Lissa, 25, 30, 372, 373, 374, 378 Lithuania: Council of Lithuania, 3, 5–9, 14; Hasidic movement in, x, 346–47, 522; and Mitnagdim–Hasidim dispute, 524, 526; number of Jews in, 184; peddler women of, 3, 4, 5–9, 13, 583, 590 Litmann family, 557 Locke, John, 89, 90, 261 London, England: and American War of Independence, 276; Azulai’s travels in, 276; crime in, 213–15; Gordon’s reproach of Jews of, 425; Old Bailey court records, 135–36; riots in, 270; and winter of 1783– 84, 393 Lopez, Aaron, 137–38, 140, 273 Lopez, Moses, 137 Lopukhin, Pyotr, 571–72 Los Caprichos (Goya), 546–47 Louis XV, King of France: attempt on life of, 54, 62; and civil status of Jews, 479; and consummation of marriage, 186; death of, 263; and Franklin, 190; and French Revolution, 458, 461; and Friedrich II, 51; and Geldern’s hope for court appointment, 73–74, 84; and Pereira’s sign language, 79, 146 Louis XVI, King of France: ascension to throne, 263; and Azulai’s travels, 280; and

609

Berr’s naturalization, 310; and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, 489; edict of toleration for Calvinists, 396; and French Revolution, 480, 481–82; marriage and family life of, 269–70; and Turgot’s reforms in France, 269; Wessely on, 370, 396–97 Łubieński, Aleksander, 114 Lublin, 22, 24–25, 100, 332, 439, 450, 522 Lucinde (Schlegel), 585–86 Lunel, Jacob de, 62 Luntschitz, Abraham, 486 Luria, Isaac (the ARI), 344 Luzzatto, Ephraim, 135 Luzzatto, Moshe Hayim, 24, 120, 124–25, 233, 324 Lwow, 106, 111, 113–19, 123, 238, 240, 244, 309, 367, 377, 405–6 Lyon, Angel, 425 Lyons, Israel, xiv, 151–52 Maamar hatora vehah� okhma [Essay on Torah and Wisdom] (Levison), 210–11 Ma’ase nisim [Miraculous Acts], 519 Maciejko, Pawel, 116, 124, 301, 306, 425, 556 magic. See supernatural, mysticism, and magic The Magic Flute (Mozart), 489–90 Magid devarav leya’aqov [He Tells His Words to Jacob] (Dov Ber), 344, 348 Magnus, Elihu, 249 Mahler, Raphael, 487 Maimon, Solomon, xiv; on aristocracy, 177–78; autobiographies of, 298, 529–30, 531; in Berlin, 299, 300; conversion to Christianity considered by, 410, 418; and crisis in Poland, 182; death of, 551; and elite women in Berlin, 406; Essay on Transcendental Philosophy, 175; and Euchel, 411, 529; on Falk, 301; in Germany, 298–99; Giv’at hamore [The Guide’s Hill], 528–29; and Goethe, 530; and Hasidic movement, 223–25; and Haskalah movement, 529, 530; indifference to Jewishness, 529, 530; isolation of, 530–31; and Kant, 175; marriage and family life of, 176–77, 410–11; and Mendelssohn,

610

I n de x

300; patrons of, 530; as philosopher, 530; portrait of, 530; in Posen, 299–300; and rabbinical elite, 223, 530; and religious tolerance, 260; in Republic of Letters, 176; on superstition, 300, 332–33; travels of, 409–11 Maimonides, 143, 144, 261, 281, 345, 494, 526, 529 Malagrida, Gabriel, 44, 165 Malesherbes, Guillaume-Chrétien de, 451 Malino, Frances, 451 Marcus, Simon, 57–58 Margolioth, Judah Leib, 329–30, 379 Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria: attitudes toward Jews, 243, 244, 264, 307, 318; conservative worldview of, 269–70; death of, 264; demonstrations of loyalty/ devotion to, 58, 60, 62; and Dobruška family’s titles, 305; and educational reforms, 261; and Eybeschütz, 39; and Frank, 306, 307; and Friedrich II, 51, 264, 265; and Jew Edict (Judenordnung), 309; and Jewish Question, 247; and Joseph II’s rule in Austria, 198–99, 316; and loss of Silesia, 51; and Partition of Poland, 239–40, 241, 243; regulations/restrictions imposed on Jews, 12, 13, 365–66; religious zealotry of, 307; and revolt of Bohemian peasants, 265, 267; on revolts and revolutions, 266; and rights of Jews, 243–44; as ruler of Habsburg Empire, 198; and Seven Years’ War, 39, 61; and Turgot’s reforms in France, 269; and War of the Bavarian Succession, 265; and Wolf Eybeschütz, 33 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France: ascension to throne, 263; and consummation of marriage, 186; and French Revolution, 480, 481–82; Gordon’s criticisms of, 476; and Partition of Poland, 239; pregnancy of, 269–70, 276–77; and Wollstonecraft, 477 Marie Leszczyńska, Queen, consort of Louis XV, King of France, 186 marriages: and divorces, 6, 215–19, 410–11, 584, 588, 589–90; Glikl on trap of, 589; between Jews and non-Jewish people, 326,

422; and proof of knowledge of German language, 453; restrictions imposed on Jews, 366, 453, 509, 513 Marsden, John, 491 Mas, Sheinele, 404 Masa be’arav [A Voyage to Arab Lands] (Romanelli), 414 Maskilim: and Berlin community, 323; and collapse of Haskalah movement, 552–53; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 360, 362; early members and meetings of, 208–9; and educational reforms, 413; and elite women in Berlin, 406; and Euchel, 412, 413; and French Revolution, 251, 505; and Jewish Republic of Letters, 376; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 453; in leadership, 346, 368, 413; movement associated with (see Haskalah movement); philosophical family tree of, 345; publication of (see Hameasef); and rabbinical authority, 250–51; reforms advocated by, 319, 345, 356; and sciences, 210, 345. See also Euchel, Isaac; Wessely, Naphtali Herz Maury, Jean Siffrin, 464 Mecklenburg, 148, 230, 250, 251, 292, 311, 583–84 medical advancements, 551–52 Medinat Mehrin (Moravian Council), 12 Megerlin, David, 31 Megilat sefer (Emden), 129 Mehalel re’a [Praise of a Friend] (Wessely), 321 Meir, Jacob, 22 Meir Ben Joseph, 138–39 Mejer, Luisa, 314–15 Melukhat shaul [The Kingdom of Saul] (Haephrati), 492–93 Menasseh Ben Israel, 375 Mendel of Rimanov, Menachem, 522 Mendel of Vitebsk, Menahem, 222, 232, 282, 284–85, 357, 443, 523 Mendelssohn, Joseph, 530 Mendelssohn, Moses: and betrothed/ wife (Fromet), 64–65, 157, 296–97; and blood libels in Poland, 312–13; and burial practices dispute, 249–51, 260; and

I n de x changing attitudes toward Jews, 206; on Christianity’s evangelicalism, 188–89; and citizenship of Jews, 359; and da Costa, 151; daughter of (Dorothea), xiv, 406, 407, 477, 586–89, 590; death of, 438–39; and De Pinto’s dispute with Voltaire, 166–67; and devaluing of coinage, 57; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 360, 362; and Emden, 144, 250–51, 260, 263; on Enlightenment, 391, 397, 547; and Euchel, 355; On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences, 157; and expulsion of Jews from Switzerland, 262; and Frankists, 556; and Friedrich II, 391; and Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, 266; and Haskalah movement, 209, 345; and Hennings, ix; and Horowitz’s The Columns of the House of Judah, 209; and hot air balloons, 392; and humanism, 260, 261, 262, 376, 380; introduction to Vindiciae judaeorum [The Hope of Israel], 372, 375, 376, 379, 381; Jerusalem, 363, 381, 409, 438; and Jewish Enlightenment, 397; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 366, 453; and Kant, 157, 206, 296, 297–98, 318, 439; and Lavater’s challenge, 207–8; and Lefin’s proposed reforms, 506; and Leibniz, 439; and Lessing, 145, 154–55, 315, 381; and Maimon, 300; and Maimonides, 144; on natural religion, 167, 189, 208; Netivot hashalom (German translation of Pentateuch), 319–23, 332; patriotism of, 55, 64–66, 167; pessimism/apprehension of, 380–81, 389; Phaedon, 206–7, 208, 298; philosophical scholarship of, 144–46; Philosophical Writings, 157; on Poland, 298; on progress, 380–81; and property law guide, 311–12; in Prussia, 296–97; on public executions, 54; Qohelet musar periodical of, 155–57, 587; and rabbinical authority, 250–51, 260, 376; and religious fanaticism, xvii, 376, 547, 587; and religious tolerance, 167, 189, 207, 260, 261, 311, 376; in Republic of Letters, 145, 157, 207; on role of philosophy, 157–58; On Sentiments, 145, 156; Sermon on Peace, 167; and Seven Years’ War, 55, 64–66, 167; skepticism on human

611

progress, x; on spirit of progress, 185–86; and status of Jews, 311, 359; success/ fame of, 206–7, 211; and Switzerland’s marriage restrictions, 313–14; translation of Rousseau’s work, 48; and the United States, 399; and Voltaire’s Candide, 54–55; and Voltaire’s Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, 198; and Wessely, 366, 374; and Wolfssohn’s Sih�a beerets hah�ayim, 494; and women/gender roles, 157 Mendelssohn Veit, Brendel-Dorothea, xiv, 406, 407, 477, 586–89, 590 Mendes, David Franco, 208 Mendoza, Daniel, xiv, 432–33, 434–36, 586 The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), 448 merchants: Azulai’s criticisms of, 536; in Berlin, 57; and exclusion of Jews from Russia, 180–81; and Friedrich II’s General Privilege decree, 11–12; immigration to North America, 137–38; in Russia, 309–10, 509; and Seven Years’ War, 55–56 Mercier, Louis Sebastian, 355 Meshulam Zalman Ben Aharon, 132 Mesmer, Franz Anton, 303 mesmerism, 303 messianism: and Ba’al Shem Tov, 350–51; and Ben Abraham, xi, 511; of Brothers, 510, 511; Christian, 449; and Emden–Eybeschütz dispute, 24; and Frank on partition of Poland, 238; and French Revolution, 475, 480; of Gordon, 125, 424; and Jews of China, 150; and Joseph II, 200, 367; Kusdini on, 283; and Mendelssohn, 359; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 362; and military service of Jews, 466; and plan to return to Land of Israel, 564, 565; and Ricchi’s end-of-days predictions, 350; Rousseau on, 160; of Sabbateans, 306; Stiles’s curiosity about, 274; and turn of the century, 556; and Wolf Eybeschütz, 33, 123 The Messia of the Jews (Friedrichsfeld), 516 Metastasio, Pietro, 208 meteors, 394 Meyer, Aaron and Raisel, 408 Meyer, Jacob (later Jacob Philadelphia), 303–4

612

I n de x

Meyer, Mariana, 419 Meyer, Sara (later Sophie von Grotthuis), 266, 407–8, 419 Meyers, Naphtali Hart, 213 Michaelis, Johann David, 154, 362–63, 449 Micromégas (Voltaire), 49 Miernik, Moshe, 7 Mikhel of Złoczów, Yechiel, 522 military service of Jews: and French Revolution, 474, 475, 482, 483–84; in Italy, 519–20; and Joseph II’s policies of toleration, 453–56; and messianism, 466; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 362, 363; in Polish rebellion, 507–8; restrictions imposed on Jews, 513 Minden, Leib, 400 mints and coinage, 56–57 miracles, intellectuals’ refutation of, x Mitnagdim: and Hasidism, 232, 236, 344, 346, 349–50, 379, 441–42, 524–26, 570–75, 577. See also Vilna Gaon Mitspe yequtiel (Cohen), 441 Mitspe yoqtael (Levin), 441 Modena, 278–79, 378, 519 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 42, 89 Montgolfier, Joseph and Jacques, 354, 391, 392 Moravia, 12, 365–66, 367, 378, 454 Moravian Brethren of Herrnhut, 117 Mordecai of Chrnobyl, 522 Mordecai of Lekovich, 522 Moritz, Karl Philipp, 381, 529–30 Morocco, 414–16 Morpurgo, Elia, 367, 374, 438 Moshe, Daniel, 213 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 148, 351–52, 489, 498 Mulder, Catherine, 401 Münster, Balthasar, 195 Münz-Entrepreneurs, 56 music, 134–35 Muslims, 414, 566 My Journal (Lehman), 416–17 Nachman of Bratslav, Rabbi, xiv, 522, 523, 567–69, 590

Nachman of Horodenka, 222 Nachman of Kosow, 331–32 Nachum of Chrnobyl, 522 Nah�al habesor [The Herald Spring] (Euchel), 372, 376, 377 Naples, 81, 84, 559 Napoleon I, Emperor of the French: on beginning of French Revolution, 396; Carpi’s support of, 559; Egyptian campaign, 564–67; and Goya’s The Third of May 1808, 547; Jewish alliance with, 564–67; presented as redeemer of Jews, 518, 519, 521; Shneur Zalman’s apprehensions about, 569–70; and soldiers deployed on European continent, 550; and status of Jews in France, 479–80. See also French Revolution Napoleonic Wars, 518–21, 547, 548–49 Nassy, David, 362 Nathan of Mülheim, Mendel, 393 Nathan the Wise (Lessing), 262, 314–18, 359, 361, 449 natural disasters. See disasters and catastrophes A Natural History of Fossils (Da Costa), 149 naturalization. See citizenship and naturalization of Jews natural religion, 159, 167, 189, 192, 208, 316, 497, 530 Necker, Jacques, 354 Neiburg, Eliezer, 216–17, 219 Neiburg, Itzik, 215–19 Netivot hashalom (Mendelssohn), 319–23, 330 New and Revised General Privilege in the Kingdom of Prussia, 3, 9–12, 65, 90, 154, 242, 299 New Christians, 137 Newport, Rhode Island, 137, 139, 273, 274–75 Newton, John, 399 A New World (Issachar Ber), 230–31, 253–55, 281 A New World . . . . (Tsevi), 436–37 New York, 137, 139, 310–11 Nicolai, Friedrich, 57, 153, 206, 312, 360 Nieto, Isaac, 131, 150, 151 Nikolsburg, 26, 82, 235, 454

I n de x nineteenth century, celebrations at turn of, 550–51 Nolbach, Hava, 16 Nones, Benjamin, 563 North Africa, 414–16 North American colonies: adaptation/ assimilation to cultures in, 139–40; and Declaration of Independence, 261, 265, 271; Franklin’s visit from, 189–90; immigration to, 137–40, 447–48; Karigal’s travels in, 273–75; and Paine’s radical writings, 265; and Seven Years’ War, 50, 51, 138; and slave trade, 137–39; taxation of, 190–91, 192; War of Independence, 191, 261, 270–72, 353, 354, 456, 457. See also United States of America Norway, 193 Notkin, Neta H·aimovitch, 561 Odessa, 568 Offenbach, 425, 441, 488, 556–57 ‘Olam h�adash [A New World] (Issachar Ber), 230–31, 253–55, 281 Old Bailey court records, London, England, 135–36 On Crimes and Punishments (Beccaria), 196 On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences (Mendelssohn), 157 On Sentiments (Mendelssohn), 54, 145, 156 On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 379 Oppenheimer, Joseph Süß, 195 orphaned children, 533 Ottoman Empire, 283, 565, 567 Pacific, exploring islands of, 188 Paine, Thomas, xi, 265, 354–55, 477, 538, 539 Palazzo del Te, 278 Pale of Settlement, Jews living in, 181, 246, 509 Panin, Nikita, 180 paper manufacturing, 278 Paris, France: Azulai’s travels in, 79–80, 276, 279, 280, 281–82; emancipation of Jews in, 514; and French Revolution, 458, 459, 460–61, 464; and hot air balloons, 391–92; and winter of 1783–84, 393 patriotism: and American War of Independence, 270–72, 456–57; and

613

citizenship of Jews, 466; and Dohm on citizenship, 361–62; of Euchel, 413, 496; and French Revolution, 474, 475, 476–77, 479–80, 482, 484, 489, 496; and Friedrich Wilhelm II’s ascension to throne, 397; and Jewish communities in Galicia, 243; of Joselewicz, 508; and Louis XVI’s ascension to throne, 263; of Mendelssohn, 55, 64–66, 167; and Michaelis’s criticisms of Jews, 449–50; and military service of Jews, 453–56, 466, 508; and Napoleonic Wars, 518–19; and Polish rebellion (1794), 507; and Seven Years’ War, 55, 57, 60, 61, 62, 64–66, 72, 135; of Spire, 461, 462, 465; Wessely’s patriotic prayer, 194 Pawel I, Emperor of Russia, 510, 560–61, 569, 572, 574 peasants: and revolt of Bohemian peasants, 265, 267–68; treatment of, 261; and Turgot’s reforms in France, 269 peddlers: in America, 137; and Friedrich II’s General Privilege decree, 11; peddler women of Lithuania, 3, 4, 5–9, 13, 583, 590; and poverty, 137; Thannhauser’s life as, 533–34 Pelham, Henry, 88 Pelham-Holles, Thomas, 88 Pencak, William, 140 Pentateuch, Mendelssohn’s German translation of, 319–23, 332 Pereira, Jacob Rodrigues, xiv, 79, 146, 487 Pereira, Moses Gomez, 511 Pergen, Johann von, 240 Perlin, Lipman, 147 Perlov of Stolin, Asher, 522 Perpetual Peace (Kant), 483 Perry, Thomas, 90 persecution of Jews: and Chelsea Gang, 214– 15; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 315; and Mendelssohn’s critique of Christianity, 189; and Voltaire’s Rabbi Akib character, 165–66 Peter III, Czar of Russia, 51, 65, 180, 268 Pezzl, Johann, 390 Phaedon (Mendelssohn), 206–7, 208, 298 Philadelphia, 64, 137, 138, 271, 273, 399, 437, 457, 458, 490, 563

614

I n de x

Philadelphia, Jacob, xiv, 303–4 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 137 Phillips, Jonas, 271, 456–57 Phillips, Naphtali, 457 Philosophical and Critical Inquiries Concerning Christianity (Bonnet), 207 Philosophical Writings (Mendelssohn), 157 philosophy: Friedländer on victory of, 553; and Horowitz’s condemnation of, 528; and Mendelssohn, 144–46, 157–58 Pierre, François-Joachim de, 49 Pikulski, Gaudenty, 95 Pipes, Richard, 245 Pitt, William, 50, 93, 510 Pius VI, Pope, 307–8, 364–65, 418, 547, 548, 559 Plantation Act (1740), 89, 93, 140 Pocket Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire), 162, 197–98 Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Voltaire), 44–45 pogroms, 316, 461 Polacco, Daniel Levi, 520 Polack, Simon, 195 Poland: Bar Confederation in, 180, 181, 183, 193, 238; blood libel cases in, x, 94–97, 99, 101, 196, 312, 370, 552; Catherine II’s interest in, 180; Catholic Church’s supremacy in, 503; citizenship of Jews in, 505; constitution of, 397, 503, 504, 506; decline/collapse of, 177–78, 183–84, 185; and emigration to Land of Israel, 282, 284–85; and emigration to North America, 137; Frankist crisis in, 105–18, 123; Hasidism in, 224, 225, 230, 236–37, 343, 506, 522; hostility toward Jews in, 452; isolation of Jewish people in, 95; Jewish life in, 181–82; Jewish population of, 184, 237–38, 241–47; Jewish Question in, 504–5; loss of independence, 481; Maimon on, 177–78; and Mendelssohn, 298; military service of Jews in, 507–8; partitions of, xiii, 177, 178, 184, 237–47, 481, 506, 508–9, 533; rebellion in (1794), 507–8; riots against the Jews in, 503–4; Russian soldiers in, 182; and the Sejm, 180, 183, 184, 185, 240, 397, 446–47, 452, 466, 503–6;

taxation of Jewish subjects in, 183–84; torture abolished in, 261; violent crimes in, 213; war with Russia, 506; Wessely’s criticism of Jews in, 372 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 8, 94–97, 175, 177–80 Political Testament of 1752 (Friedrich II), 10 Polonsky, Antony, 95 Polonus, Solomon, 505, 507 Pombal, Marquess Sebastião Jose de Carvalho, Marquis of, 42 Pompadour, Madame de, 51, 158 Poniatowski, Stanislaw Augustus: attempts to remove from power, 301; and blood libels, 370; and Catherine the Great, 178–80; and collapse of Poland, 183; and Jewish Question, 247, 505; and Maimon, 529; and partitions of Poland, 240, 481, 506; policy of cooperation with Russia, 397; and rabbinical establishment, 236; Wessely on, 370 Pope, Alexander, 156 Porcelain Law, 242 Porges, Moses, 556 Portugal, earthquake in, 39, 40–46 Posner, Nathaniel, 356–57, 374, 375–76, 381 Potsdam, 10, 56, 58, 84, 240, 247, 534 poverty: beggars, 11, 137, 534, 583–84, 590; of boys sent to study Torah, 416–17; and crime, 213; in Land of Israel, 285; and peddler women of Lithuania, 6; and Romanelli’s travels in Morocco, 414; and struggle for survival, 353, 534, 583–84 Poznan\Posen, 299, 300, 506, 509, 532 Prado, Abraham, 55 Prague, x–xi, 12–14, 20, 21, 25, 28, 33, 39, 58–61, 82, 147, 192, 199, 207, 217, 243, 264, 267–68, 274, 275, 307, 320, 366, 367, 372, 373, 374, 377, 393, 398, 402, 416, 417, 419, 437, 439, 441, 455, 456, 482, 492, 493, 555–56, 557, 558 Prenzlau, 11, 583–84 Pressburg, 72, 81, 82, 212 Preussen, Wilhelmine von, 400, 401 Priestley, Joseph, 433 Pri ‘ets h�ayim [Fruit of the Tree of Life] (Vital), 379–80

I n de x printers’ dispute in Amsterdam, 131–32 Proops brothers’ dispute with competitors, 131–32 property law, guide to, 312 A Prospect of the New Jerusalem (propaganda), 88, 91 prostitutes, 416 Prussia: beggars in, 583–84; citizenship/ emancipation of Jews in, 513–14, 553–54; deportations of Jews from, 242; and Diplomatic Revolution, 50; economic competition in, 9–10; and education reform proposals of Levine, 247–48; and French Revolution, 483; and Friedrich II’s General Privilege, 3, 9–12, 65, 90, 154, 242, 299; Friedrich Wilhelm III’s rule of, 550–51; and Haskalah, 345; and Jewish population, 241–42; and partitions of Poland, 239, 241–42, 509; and Polish rebellion, 507–8; and Porcelain Law, 242; religious tolerance in, 370, 422; and Russia’s power, 240; and Seven Years’ War, 39–40, 50–52, 55–65; status of Jews in, 513–14; war with France, 480, 483–84; war with Russia, 51, 196. See also Friedrich II, King of Prussia Pugachev, Yemelyan, 268 Pugachev Rebellion, 268 Qalut da’at vetsevi’ut [Frivolity and Hypocrisy] (Wolfssohn), 494–95 Qav hayashar (Kaidanover), 379 Qivrot hataava [The Graves of Appetite] (Leibl), 576 Qohelet musar periodical of Mendelssohn, 155–57, 587 Qorot ha’itim [History of the Times] (Trebitsch), 39–40, 548 rabbis and rabbinical establishment: and Adler’s Frankfurt group, 329; dispute in Vilna, Lithuania, 220–21; and Divorce of Kleve, 217–19; downfall of, 230, 237; and education, 345, 367, 440; Euchel’s criticisms of, 413; Friedländer on declining power of, 553and Hasidic movement, 223, 230, 234, 236–37, 331, 343, 349, 573 (see also Mitnagdim); Hirschl

615

of Breslau on, 437; judicial authority abolished, 452–53; and Levin’s Besamim rosh, 536; Levin’s criticisms of, 321, 461; Maimon on, 223, 530; Margolioth’s criticisms of, 330; and Maskilim, 251; and Mendelssohn, 376; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 320–21, 322; Nachman of Kosow’s criticisms of, 331–32; Orla community’s refusal of, 330–31; and Partition of Poland, 237; and Posner, 356–57; and rabbinical authority, 250–51, 252, 255, 260, 262, 322, 356–57, 377, 555; restrictions on authority, 451, 505, 506, 554; and servant women’s suits, 326–27; Shneur Zalman’s aim to overthrow, 236– 37; and Wessely’s Divrei shalom veemet, 373; and Wessely’s Rav tuv livnei Yisrael, 373–74; Wessely’s rejection of authority of, 377; women’s status with, 405–6; Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye’s critique of, 331. See also Torah studies/scholars Rakowski, Gutman, 181, 182 Ramler, Karl Wilhelm, 439 Ramsay, David, 551–52 Rapaport, H·aim Cohen, 106, 114, 115, 117 Raphael, Herz Mendel, 195 Raphael, Meir Ben, 570–71, 572, 573 Raphael, Ya’aqov, 281 Rapoport-Albert, Ada, 522 rationalism. See reason and rationalism Rav tuv livnei Yisrael [Great Benefit to the Children of Israel] (Wessely), 373–74 reason and rationalism: Birkenthal on rise in, x, 552; at Christianeaum Gymnasium in Altona, 410; and Christianity, 552; and Cult of Reason in French Revolution, 489; Fleckeles on threat of, 556; and Friedrich II’s reign, 390; and Haskalah movement, 556; and Horowitz’s Sefer habrit, 527–28; and Kalisk’s criticisms of Shneur Zalman, 526–27; and Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason, 352–53, 357; and Maimon, 410, 529; Shneur Zalman’s rejection of, 527; tension between religion and, 526–27 Reb Henoch, oder: Woss tut me damit? [Rabbi Henokh, or What Can One Do with This?] (Euchel), 495–96, 498

616

I n de x

Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke), 475–76, 477, 489 rehabilitating/reforming the Jews: basic assumptions about, 248; and emigration to North America, 447–48; and essays competition of Royal Society of Science and Arts, 448–50; Euchel’s ambitions for, 412, 413; Grégoire on need for, 450; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 321; and military conscription, 453–56; and political rights, 368; in Prussia, 513; role of education in, 248, 366, 368, 412; state’s power to implement, 451 Reischer, Neh� emia, 21 religious awakening: and Adler’s Frankfurt group, 329; in Christian religion, 571, 577; and Hasidic movement, 119, 221–22, 225, 232, 348, 521–22, 523, 577; and Wolf Eybeschütz, 124 religious permissiveness: Azulai on, 276, 281, 537; Emden on threat of, 143; in Florence, 537; of Frankists, 117, 556; Friedburg’s satires condemning, 327; and Israel Ben Issachar Ber’s A New World, 230, 253, 255; of Mendoza, 435; penalties for, 139; of Wahl, 535–36 religious tolerance: and Azulai’s travels, 280; and Catholic Church, 364–65; and conversion of Jews to Christianity, 408–9, 421; and Cumberland’s The Jew, 490–91, 498; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 360–63; Emden on, 108, 260; in England, 370, 390; and exclusion of Jews from Russia, 180–81; in Germany, 370; Hameasef periodical on, 397–98; in Holland, 282, 370, 515; and the Jewish question, 448; Joseph II’s policies of, 261, 265, 307, 363–68, 397, 452–53; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 315–18; Louis XVI’s edict for Calvinists, 396; and Mendelssohn, 167, 189, 207, 260, 261, 311, 376; and Posner’s challenge to rabbinical authority, 356–57; in Prussia, 370, 422; in Russia, 237; and servitude of Jews, 590; in the United States, 311, 399; Voltaire’s call for, 161–63, 197; Wessely’s call for, 397–98

religious zealotry/fanaticism: and age of criticism, 353; and Calas affair, 160–61; and Lefin’s proposed reforms, 506; of Maria Theresa, 307; Mendelssohn on, xvii, 376, 547, 587; pervasiveness of, 390; and Romanelli’s travels in Morocco, 415; Rousseau on, 159–60; suffering caused by, 311; Voltaire on, 160–61, 165–66, 197 Renaissance, 46 Repnin, Nikolai, 180 Republic of Letters, 145, 151, 157, 176, 207, 355, 376, 584 Resen mat’e (Emden), 107 Reshit limudim [The Beginning of Studies] (Linda), 358 Reuben, Elijah, 94–96 Reuben, Jacob, 94–96 A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (Brothers), 510 The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Rousseau), 265–66 revolutions/rebellions: and American War of Independence, 191, 261, 270–72, 353, 354, 456, 457; and Enlightenment, 266, 267; and Paine’s The Rights of Man, 477; of the 1770s and early 1780s, 261, 265, 266–72; and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 477–78. See also French Revolution Rey, Jacob, 538–39 Rhine, 74, 215, 393, 394, 480, 482, 483, 484 Rhode Island, 137, 139–40 Ricchi, Immanuel Hai, 350 Richter, Jean Paul, 584–85 Riess, Moses, 56 The Rights of Man (Paine), 477 Rivera, Jocob Rodrigues, 137 The Robbers (Schiller), 351 Robespierre, Maximilien, 465, 478, 485, 486, 487, 488 Romanelli, Shmuel, xiv, 414–16, 418 romanticism, 266, 546, 547, 549 Rome, 308, 418, 547, 558–59 Rosman, Moshe, 405 Rossi, Azariah dei, 43 Rothschild, Anschel, 448 Rotterdam, 401, 516

I n de x Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: death of, 263; departure from France, 158; Discourse on Inequality, 48; Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, 48; Emile, 158, 159, 167, 440; Mendelssohn’s translations of work, 48; on progress, 48; on public executions, 54; on religious zealotry, 159–60; The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, 265–66; The Social Contract, 158–59, 167; and Voltaire’s poem on Lisbon earthquake, 45; and women, 159 Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, 151, 152, 157, 514, 532 Royal Society, 187, 391 Royal Society of Science and Arts of Metz, 448–51 Rozier, Jean-Francois Pilatre de, 392 Ruderman, David, xii, 369 Russia: and balance of power in Europe, 240; citizenship of Jews in, 452; Defense of the Rights of the Jews of Russia, 452; emancipation of Jews in, 309–10, 452; exclusion of Jews from, 180–81; famine blamed on Jews in, 560–61; and Frankists, 182–83; and Jewish population, 241; and Jewish Question, 560; merchants in, 309–10, 509; and Pale of Settlement restrictions, 181, 246; and partitions of Poland, 178, 237, 239, 240, 244–46, 509; and Polish rebellion, 507–8; Poniatowski’s policy of cooperation with, 397; and Pugachev Rebellion, 268; religious freedom in, 237; restrictions imposed on Jews, 510, 531; rights of Jews in, 245–46, 452; and Russo-Turkish War, 240; war with Poland, 506; war with Prussia, 51, 196; war with Turkey, 283, 398. See also Catherine II, Empress of Russia; White Russia Russo-Turkish War, 240, 283, 398 Sabbateanism and Sabbateans: amulets suspected of, 4, 15–18, 23, 25, 27; Emden on threat of, 107–8, 129, 262; and Eybeschütz, Jonathan, 4–5, 14, 15, 20, 24–25, 26, 29, 78; and Eybeschütz, Wolf, 123–24; Fleckeles’ attacks on, 556, 557; and Hasidic movement, 120, 234; violence against, 557

617

Safed, 73, 82, 83–84, 121, 282–83, 284, 380 Safra, Judah, 220 Salieri, Antonio, 148 Salomon, Haym, 271–72, 437 Salvador, Francis, xiv, 272 Salvador, Joseph, 89, 90 Samson, Gumpel, 271 Samuel, Rebecca, 512 Saperstein, Marc, 265 Saraval, Jacob Raphael, 134 Sarna, Jonathan, 272 Sasportas, Jacob, 516 Satanow, Isaac Halevi, 312, 323, 332, 358–59, 369, 379, 380 Schadow, Gottfried, 407 Schechter, Ronald, 482 Schick, Baruch, 324–25, 421 Schiff, David Tevele, 372–73 Schikaneder, Emanuel, 489 Schiller, Friedrich, 351, 395 Schlegel, Friedrich, 406, 585–86, 588 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 586 Schleswig-Holstein, 193 Schlözer, August Ludwig von, 354, 357 Schmid, Anton, 492 Scholem, Gershom, 22, 109, 116–17 Schönfeld, Franz Thomas von (previously Moses Dobruška), 305, 421 schools. See education and schools Schorsch, Jonathan, 358 science: achievements during eighteenth century, 550, 551–52; and Azulai’s travels, 80; and burial practices, 230, 248–51, 440–41; explanations of natural disasters, 44; and growth of intellectual elite, 211; and Hebrew language, 210; Horowitz’s condemnation of, 527–28; and hot air balloons, xiii, 210, 354, 391–92, 488–89; and Maskilim, 210, 345; neglect of, 345; progress in, 187, 210, 389; and rabbinical authority, 250–51, 260; Rousseau’s critique of, 48; Schick’s publications in, 324–25; smallpox inoculations, 209–10; and spirit of optimism, 391 Scurr, Ruth, 485 The Search for Light and Justice (Cranz), 380 Secondo, Giuseppe, 398

618

I n de x

Secret Proofs of the Truth of the Christian Religion (Megerlin), 31 secularization: and Azulai’s travels, 282, 283; and Christian Church, 353; and Frankism/Frankists, 117; Friedländer on potential for, 553; growing impetus of, x, xii, xiii, 379; Hasidim’s fears of, 521; and Israel Ben Issachar Ber’s ‘Olam h�adash, 230–31; and Joseph II’s reforms, 369; and Karigal, 275; and Mendelssohn’s introduction to Vindiciae judaeorum, 375; and Rahel Levin, 497; and Trebitsch, 369, 371; and Tsevi on threat of, 436, 437; and Wolf Eybeschütz, 124 Sedlnicki, Karol, 26 Sefat emet [The Language of Truth] (Euchel), 356 Sefer bekhi neharot [Story of Rivers of Weeping] (Avraham of Copenhagen), 393–94, 395 Sefer habrit [The Book of the Covenant] (Horowitz), 527–28, 529 Sefer hitavqut [Book of Struggles] (Emden), 122 Sefer shimush (Emden), 130 Sefer viquah� [The Book of Dispute] (Leibl), 576, 577 Segal, Isaac, 59 Segal, Simh� a, 122–23 Seixas, Gershom Mendes, 271, 457–58, 562 Seixas, Moses, 511 self-rule, 5, 8, 113, 247, 553, 554–55 Selig, Gottfried, 328 Senigallia, Abraham, 549 Sephardim and Sephardi communities: and American War of Independence, 271; Ashkenazim contrasted with, 465–66; and Atias’s La guerta de oro, 318–19; and Chelsea Gang, 214; and emigration to North America, 137; and French Revolution, 462, 475; and Hasidim in Land of Israel, 285; in Holland, 370, 516; and Karigal’s Newport sermon, 275; and rebellion in Dutch Republic, 400; and socioeconomic distinctions, 164 Serbia, 398 Sermon of Rabbi Akib (Voltaire), 166, 167

Sermon on Peace (Mendelssohn), 167 servants, Jewish, 11, 211, 326–27, 402, 403–4, 417–18 settlements for Jews, 453 Seven Years’ War, 50–53; debt caused by, 190; and demonstrations of loyalty/support, 58–64; and devaluing of coinage, 56–57; international relations after, 190; and Luzzatto’s poem, 135; and Mendelssohn, 55, 64–66, 167; North American battles of, 138; and patriotism of Jews, 55, 57, 60, 61, 62, 64–66, 72, 135; roles of merchants/entrepreneurs in, 55–56; and travel journals of Azulai and Geldern, 73; Trebitsch on impact of, 39–40; and Voltaire’s Candide, 52 Several Jewish family scenes (Arnstein), 368 sexual assaults, 7, 402 sexuality: and abandoned wives, 403; and Adler’s Frankfurt group, 329; and adultery, 212–13; Catherine the Great on desire, 179; changing attitudes and norms, 252–54; erosion of rabbinical control over, 326; and Hasidism’s erotic language, 349; Maimon on desires, 176–77; and Maimon’s marriage, 176; Mozart’s comments on, 351–52; and permissive attitudes, 211–13, 282, 402, 403; premarital sex, 402; public knowledge of rulers’ intimacy problems, 186–87; and separation of the genders, 326; and vulnerability of servants, 211; women as transgressors, 403 Shalem, H·akham Shlomo, 253 Shalom, Shaul Ben, 402 Shanes, Joshua, 309 Shapiro, Gitl, 21 Shearith Israel congregation, New York, 139 Sheftall, Mordecai, 272 Shekinah, 118 Shemesh hasharon [The Sun of the Sharon] (Friedburg), 328 Shesnowzi, Eliezer Sussman, 121–22 Shevet musar (Hacohen), 379 Shimon Ben Zechariah, 438, 440 Shivh�ei ha-Besht [In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov], 118, 119, 521

I n de x Shlomo of Łuck, 344, 348 Shmelke, Shmuel, 235 Shmuel Ben Eliezer, 221 Shmuel Ben Shlomo, 112 Shneur Ben Shlomo of Pawołocz, 94–95 Shneur Zalman of Lyadi: apprehensions about Napoleon, 569–70; on campaign against Hasidim, 235; and Catherine the Great, 245; and Dov Ber of Międzyrzecz, 222; and French Revolution, 570; Hasidim defended by, 232, 443–44; Hasidim seeking audience with, 522, 524; Igeret qodesh [The Holy Epistle], 527; imprisonment/interrogations of, xiii, 572, 573, 574–75, 577; Kalisk’s criticisms of, 526–27; and leadership of Hasidim, 222; and Mitnagdim–Hasidim dispute, 525–26, 572–75; and Partition of Poland, 241; and rabbinical establishment, 236, 332, 574; rationalism rejected by, 527; and religious pluralism, 577; on sensations of physical body, 524; on significance of year 1772 in Hasidism, 230; Tanya, 523–24, 526; and Vilna Gaon, 232 Shönfeld, Thomas von, 487–88 Shorr, Chaya, 112 Shorr, Shlomo, 113 Shorr family, 557 “Short History of the Messiah Sabbatai Zevi” (Anton), 28 sign language, 79, 146, 552 Sih�a beerets hah�ayim [Conversation in the World of the Living] (Wolfssohn), 494 Silber, Michael, 452–53 Silesia, 10 Simch� a Ben Yehoshu’a, 222 Simonds, Henry, 135 Simson, Solomon, 512 Sinzheim, David, 463 skeptics and skepticism, xi, 45, 124, 233, 262, 281, 282, 394, 436–37, 556 slaughterers and slaughtering practices, 131, 532, 533 slave trade and slave holders, 137–39, 358–59, 360, 390, 398–99, 478 The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Goya), 546–47, 549

619

Slew, Joseph, 214 smallpox inoculations, 209–10, 552 The Social Contract (Rousseau), 158–59, 167 Social Philosophy (Frey), 488 Society for the Promotion of the Good and the Noble, 439, 460–61. See also Haskalah movement Society for the Promotion of the Hebrew Language, 412, 438, 439. See also Haskalah movement Society of Friends (Gesellschaft der Freunde), 530 Sofer, Joseph, 121 Sofer, Moshe, 329, 537 Solam, Moses di David, 520 Solomon and Joseph II (Alexander of Regensburg), 368 Solomon of Dubno, 209, 263 Soltyk, Kajetan, 94–96, 99 “Song of the Yeshiva Boys of Frankfurt,” 133–34 Sonnenfels, Joseph von, 147 Sons of Liberty, 191 Soria, Angelo de, 146 Sorkin, David, 368, 509 The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe), 265–66, 353, 407 Sparre, Karl, 293–94 Spektor, Yoel, 445 Speyer, Mendel, 30–31 Spinoza, Baruch, xi Spire, Abraham, 461–62, 475 The Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), 42, 153 Staszic, Stanislaw, 177 steam engines, impact of, 353–54 Steblitzki, Joseph, 422 Sternhartz of Nemirov, Nathan, 522–23, 567 Stettin, 51, 178, 299 St. George’s Fields Massacre, 191 Stiles, Ezra, 140, 270–71, 273–74, 419 Stockholm, Sweden, 291–94 The Story of My Life (Casanova), 47 Story of Rivers of Weeping (Avraham of Copenhagen), 393–94, 395 Strasbourg, 310, 319, 360, 420, 459, 483, 486, 488, 489, 583 Strauss, David, 132

620

I n de x

Struensee, Johann Friedrich, 194–96, 198 Sumbal, Joseph H·aim, 421–22 supernatural, mysticism, and magic: and age of criticism, 353; and charlatans, 301–4; conventional responses to mystical groups, 125; as explanation for natural disasters, 43; and Falk, 120–24; and Goethe’s Faust, 490; and tests of rational criticism, 379; trends in beliefs in, x, 121, 390, 552 Sweden, 291–94, 332, 370 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 301 Switzerland, 262, 313–14, 357, 547 Syria, 83, 311, 371, 566 Szajkowski, Zosa, 486, 487 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 475 Talmon, Jacob, 466 Talmud: burning of, 106, 113, 118; rights to print, 131–32 Tama, Mordecai, 281–82 Tang, Abraham, 192–93, 197–98 Tanya (Shneur Zalman), 523–24, 526 Teh�inat imahot [Mothers’ Supplication], 405–6 Teller, Adam, 330 Terni, Mattatya Nissim, 548–49 Teumim, Yosef Meir, 395 Teutsche Merkur, 308 Tevele of Lissa, 373, 374, 378 Thannhauser, Isaac, 533–34 theatrical productions, 489–96, 498 Theodora (Händel), 47 The Third of May 1808 (Goya), 547 Tiberias, 285, 526, 568 Tiferet haadam [The Glory of Man] (Schick), 324 time capsule document in Gotha, 389, 396 titles of nobility, pursuit of, 304–6, 310, 555 “To Die for the Homeland” (Abbt), 65 Toland, John, 89 Toldot ya’qov yosef (Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye), 262, 331, 333, 343, 345, 347 tolerance. See religious tolerance Torah: German translation of, 262; and Levison’s Essay on Torah and Wisdom, 210–11; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 319–23

Torah studies/scholars: diminished status of, 328; and French Revolution, 486; Horowitz’s criticisms of, 332; of Lehman in Prague, 416–17; and modern schools, 367; in Morocco, 415; Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye’s critique of, 262, 331–32. See also rabbis and rabbinical establishment torture: for attempted assassination, 95; for blood libels, 94–96, 100–101, 196, 312; and Calas affair, 160–61; of Göldi in Switzerland, 357; and humanism, 196–97; and judicial murders, 357 Traub, Deborah, 534–35 Treaties of Fluxions (Lyons), 151 Treatise on Tolerance (Voltaire), 158, 160–61, 167 Trebitsch, Abraham: on body taxes, 366; on cultural renaissance, 371; on diminished status of religion, 437; and earthquake in Portugal, 39, 40; and Emden–Eybeschütz dispute, 39; on fire in Copenhagen, 531; and Franz II’s reaction against toleration, 513; and French Revolution, 480–82, 484–85, 488–89; on Holland’s emancipation of Jews, 515; and military service of Jews, 454; on Napoleon in Italy, 518, 548; on Pius VI’s trip to Vienna, 364; on Poland’s partition, 241; on Polish rebellion, 507, 508–9; on political upheavals, 390; Qorot ha’itim [History of the Times], 39–40, 548; and revolt of Bohemian peasants, 267; on Seven Years’ War, 39–40 Trieste, 309, 371–72 Tronchin, Jean Robert, 44 Tsafnat pa’aneah� (Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye), 348–49 Tsavat haribash [The Testament of Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem], 523 Tsevi, Moshe, 436–37, 466 Tucker, Josiah, 92 Tunis, Tunisia, 280 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, 269 Turkey, 240, 398, 454 Tuscany, Italy, 310 Tychsen, Oluf Gerhard, 148–49, 230, 249, 294

I n de x Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden [On the Civil Improvement of the Jews] (Dohm), 360–63, 379 Ukraine, x, 182, 184, 193, 196, 522 Ulbrich, Claudia, 403 Uman, massacre in, 182, 193, 196 Unger, Frederika, 586 Unitarian Church, 433 United States of America: Alien and Sedition Law of, 563; challenges faced by Jews in, 562–63; constitution of, 399, 457; and Declaration of Independence, 261, 265, 271, 310–11, 314, 457; Karigal’s sermon in Newport, 273, 274–75; religious observance in, 512; religious tolerance in, 311, 399; slavery in, 390, 399; status of Jews in, 310–11, 456–57, 511–12, 516, 563; War of Independence, 191, 261, 270–72, 353, 354, 456, 457 University of Halle, 107, 146, 147, 194 University of Königsberg, 175, 206, 297, 352 Uziel, Abraham, 243 Va`avo hayom el ha’ayin [And I Came this Day unto the Fountain], 22 Vassa, Gustavus (Olaudah Equiano), 398–99 Veit, Dorothea. See Mendelssohn Veit, Brendel-Dorothea Veit, Simon, 407, 588 Venice, Italy, 278, 518, 520–21 Ventura, Mordecai, 279 Verona, Italy, 278 Versailles, France, 279–80 Vidal, Abraham, 276 Vienna, Austria: and Asiatic Brethren, 421; and displays of loyalty, 398; Frank in, 306; Leibl’s travels to, 576; and Lessing’s Nathan The Wise, 315; Mozart in, 351; philosophy in, 390; Pius VI’s travels to, 364; regulations/restrictions imposed on Jews, 365–66, 372; religious conversions in, 419; Schmid’s printing house in, 492; and Sonnenfels, 147 Vilna community: arrest and imprisonment of Wolf, 446–47; and conversion of Wolf, 419–20; criticisms of Vilna Gaon, 444–45; dismissal of Avigdor, 445–46;

621

dispute with rabbi in, 220–21; HasidimMitnagdim conflict in, 346, 570–75 Vilna Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon Zalman): campaigns against Hasidism, 225, 232, 233, 234, 235, 346–47, 442, 444; and conversion of Wolf, 420; criticisms of, 444–45; death of, 526, 575, 577; and Dov Ber of Międzyrzecz, 235; expectations for family, 295–96; and Eybeschütz, 30; Hasidic leaders’ attempts to mollify, 232; imposters of, 525; and Issar’s sentence, 231; and letter of denunciation, 285; and Mitnagdim– Hasidim dispute, 524–26, 570–71; orders to burn Tsavat haribash, 524; and Schick’s science publications, 325; status of, 441; travel to Land of Israel attempted by, 295 A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Wollstonecraft), 477 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft), 477–78 Vindiciae judaeorum [The Hope of Israel], 375, 376, 379, 381 Viquah� hasheratsim [The Dispute of Crawling Things] (Friedburg), 328 Vital, H·aim, 379–80 Vivante, Raphael Vita, 520–21 volcanic eruption in Iceland, 393 Voltaire: attitudes toward Jews, 53, 161–66; and Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments, 197; on Calas affair, 160–61; Candide, 52–55, 66; and Catherine the Great, 161, 179; death of, 263–64, 390; and de la Barre’s execution, 197; De Pinto’s dispute with, 163–66; and earthquake in Portugal, 44–45; English Letters, 161–62; and Franklin, 190; and Friedrich II, 10, 49, 52; and Geldern’s travels, 84; “Jews,” 162–63; Micromégas, 49; and Partition of Poland, 239; and Pinto, 147; Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, 162, 197–98; Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, 44–45; on public executions, 54; rabbis who read works of, 282; return to Paris, 264; on Rousseau’s critiques, 48; Sermon of Rabbi Akib, 166, 167; and Seven Years’ War, 52–53, 60; and Struensee’s execution, 196; Treatise on Tolerance, 158, 160–61, 167

622

I n de x

Von Cocceji, Samuel Freiherr, 10 Von Ferber, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm, 314 Von Grotthuis, Sophie, 266 Von Rantzau, Georg Ludwig, 120–21 Von Recke, Elisa, 315 Voss, Christian Wilhelm, 154 Voss, Otto Friedrich von, 509 Voyage around the World (Bougainville), 188 Wagennar, David, 208 Wahl, Gabriel Ben Yosef, 459–60 Wahl, Wolf, 535–36, 539 Walpole, Horace, 93–94, 121, 239 Wandsbek: and Cohen’s conservative worldview, 328, 555; Emden–Eybeschütz dispute, 4, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27; and Eybeschütz, Wolf, 120; Friedburg on Jewish community of, 327–28 War of the Austrian Succession, 9–10 War of the Bavarian Succession, 265 Warsaw, 98–99, 101, 114, 116, 178, 180, 182, 183, 240, 241, 282–83, 312–13, 347, 397, 402, 419, 446, 452, 503–8, 575, 576 Washington, George, 265, 271, 354, 456–57, 477, 511–12 Wasserzug, Moshe, 532–33, 539 Wehle, Jonas, 555 Weil, Asher, 214 Weil, Levi, 214 Weishaupt, Johann Adam, 224–25 Weizenheusen, Juda, 588 Wertheimer, Samson, 133 Wesley, John, 43–44 Wessely, Karl Bernard, 439 Wessely, Naphtali Herz, xiv; and Braunschweig’s death, 395–96; critics/ opponents of, 373, 374, 378–79, 381; on cultural awakening in Berlin, 323–24; as cultural revolutionary, 377–78; culture war set off by, 366; Divrei shalom veemet [Words of Peace and Truth], 345, 366, 372, 373, 374, 376–77, 378, 474, 479; and Dohm’s On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, 362; and educational reforms, 321–22, 345, 369–70, 371, 373, 374, 377, 438; faith in historical change, 373; and French Revolution, 460; on Friedrich II, 370;

and Joseph II’s reforms, 371; and Louis XVI, 396–97; and Maskilim, 209, 377; Mehalel re’a (Praise of a Friend), 321; and Mendelssohn’s Netivot hashalom, 321; and Mendelssohn’s Phaedon, 208; and prayer blessing Christian VII, 194; and rabbinical authority, 377; Rav tuv livnei Yisrael [Great Benefit to the Children of Israel], 373–74; on religious tolerance, 397–98; and Schick, 324; on state of Jews in the world, 370–71 West Indies, 398 White Russia: famine blamed on Jews in, 560–61; Hasidism in, x, 232, 241, 522; and Mitnagdim–Hasidim dispute, 524; number of Jews in, 184; and partitions of Poland, 244–46, 509–10; under Russian rule, 451 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 308 Wilberforce, William, 399 Wilhelmina of Prussia, 401 Wilkes, John, 191–92 Wilkes Riots, 270 Willem V of Orange-Nassau, 399–401, 515 winter of 1783–84, 392–94 witch trials, 357, 360 Wolf, Abba (father), 419 Wolf, Hirsch Ben Abba (son), 419–20 Wolf, Isaac Meir, 513 Wolf, Moses, 146 Wolf, Simon Ben, xiv, 446–47, 452, 453, 466 Wolf Ben Shalom, 113 Wolfenbüttel, Gumpl, 400–401 Wolff, Bettie, 401 Wolff, Christian, 156 Wolff, Lippmann, 407 Wolf of Zhitomir, Zeev, 522 Wolfssohn, Aharon, 438, 494–95, 496, 498 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 477–78 women: abandoned wives, 326, 402–3, 410–11; and Azulai’s holiness, 276–77; as beggars, 583–84, 590; blame placed on, 326; and citizenship, 401; conversions to Christianity, 406–9, 418, 419; and De Gouges’s The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, 478; empowerment of, 558; excluded from public arena, 401; in Frankists, 112,

I n de x 117; gendered image of, 7; and gender hierarchy, 3; and gender relations, 326; and Hasidic movement, 401, 523; of Jewish bourgeoisie in Germany, 406–7, 584; Mendelssohn’s attitudes toward, 157; peddler women of Lithuania, 3, 4, 5–9, 13, 583, 590; and pregnancy, 4, 15–18, 326, 327, 402, 552; as prostitutes, 416; reading and mental illness among, 535; rights of, 477– 78; role of, in Jewish religion, 405–6; and Romanelli’s travels in Morocco, 414, 416; Rousseau’s attitudes toward, 159; seeking economic independence, 7; servant women, 11, 211, 326–27, 402, 403–4; and sexual assaults, 7, 402; suits lodged by, 327; as transgressors, 402, 403; unmarried mothers, 211, 326, 327, 402, 403, 404; Vilna Gaon’s attitudes toward, 295–96; vulnerability of, 211; and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 477–78 Wormser, Sekl Loeb, 537–38 Wright, Joseph, 187 Ximenes, Joshua and Lara, 252 Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye: Ben porat yosef, 350; on doctrines of the zaddik, 348–49; and leadership of Hasidim, 344; on rabbinical authority, 262, 331, 332, 343; Toldot ya’qov yosef, 262, 331, 333, 343, 345, 347; Tsafnat pa’aneah� , 348–49 Yampol, blood libel accusations in, 97–98, 99 Yavan, Baruch Meeretz, 26, 32, 107, 182

623

Yelisaveta Petrovna, Empress of Russia, 51 yeshiva boys, struggles of, 133–34 Yesh manh�ilin (Katzenellbogen), 130 Yesod ‘olam [The Foundation of the World] (Isaac Israeli ben Joseph), 324 Yiddish, 320 Yisrael of Polotsk, 282, 284 Yitsh� aq Ben Leib, 445 Yitsh� aq of Berdyczow, Levi, 222, 347–48, 350, 442, 443, 505, 522, 574 Yoel, Meir Ben, 101, 185 Yoh� ai, Shimon Bar, 82, 344 Yosher levav [Integrity of Heart] (Ricchi), 350 Young, Arthur, 458–59 Zalman, Eliahu Ben Shlomo, 30, 232, 393. See also Vilna Gaon Zalman, Meshulam, 326 Zartoryska, Izabela, 401 Zeitung (periodical), 461, 462, 465 Zelig, Elyakim Ben Asher, xiv, 97–101, 105, 117, 185 Zemir ‘aritsim veh�aravot tsurim [The Pruning Hook of Tyrants and Swords of Flint], 234–35 Zevi, Shabbetai, 16, 18, 27, 78, 556 Zinzendorf, Karl von, 366 Zong slave ship, 358, 399 Zuchowski, Stefan, 95 Zusya of Hanipoli, Meshulam, 522 Zytomierz, 94–97, 99 Zytomierz, Poland, blood libel executions in, 94–96, 99

Shmuel Feiner is Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University and Chairman of the Historical Society of Israel. He lives in Jerusalem and is the author of Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness; The Jewish Enlightenment; Moses Mendelssohn, Sage of Modernity; and The Origins of Jewish Secularization. Jeffr ey M. Green is a professional writer and translator who lives and works in Jerusalem. He is author of Thinking through Translation and Largest Island in the Sea.